The chickens have arrived!

The past 10 days have been spent working very hard on finishing up the outside fence for the chickens.  I learned of 5 hens that some neighbors wanted to donate to us.....they are older and thus lay less eggs than young hens, but for our purposes they are perfect!

So, we finished the coop on Thursday and just in time, because the chickens came to us on Friday!  Five beautiful white hens, a matching set.  It's hard to tell them apart, in my personal opinion, but my son has already set to naming them, he has bestowed "Furry Murry" "Red Head" and "skinny" upon three of them, but don't ask me which one is which!

First, there were no chickens

Almost there...

And done!

The "girls" are all very calm and sweet

Inside the coop

We will be setting up our chicken-duty schedules very soon, families can sign up for Morning or Evening chicken duty, it takes about 15 minutes each time to attend to their needs and is actually quite fun!

Forest Garden - Phase one

The forest garden, complete with stepping stones and plants!

We planted greenhouse overflow plants, mainly tomatoes and pumpkins in the space for the summer and we put in perennial herbs like oregano, sage and thyme as well.  In the fall we hope to raise enough money at a fundraiser to purchase the trees and bushes for the garden.  The trees we'd like to include are peach, plum, cherry, apple, apricot and pear and we need about 5 blueberry bushes (of various sizes and varieties), 2 thornless blackberries and 2 raspberry bushes to complete the garden.. OH, and a really cool stone bench for sitting in the center of the fruit trees and maybe a great stone statue or fountain or some garden art to include would be super cool too!

And here are some photos to document the front yard, as it has made some big changes lately!

Lawn removal: in progress

Looking good!  Can't wait to see it with trees!

Parent helpers are the best. (: 

I always like me a before and after picture, but this is just the before and "phase 1" photos: