Have you ever had an idea that kept expanding despite knowing that, eventually, you needed to stop coming up with more ideas?
It’s only the beginning of July, and the Lerums are going absolutely nuts. A previous blog post discussed our large flock (quite healthy with 20 hens and 1—potentially 2—roosters) and the joys of raising children with them, but it did not quite capture the adventures we’d have with the birds and our girls.
For some hair-brained reason, we decided to build a larger chicken coop for the flock with 4 rotating pastures for them to enter. That’s all well and good, but then the building began and the idea got bigger.
First, it was a deck to let me sit and enjoy the sun’s rays while watching the chickens. Then, maybe we could add a slide for our daughter, Angela, to go down (and Rosemary, once she’s older). How about we add another deck on the roof to make a tower? Oh! And we should put a slide on that tower, too! Maybe we could add a secondary deck on ground level with a cargo net.
While we’re thinking about it, let’s block off this section from the chickens and make it so the girls have a playhouse!
All of this started with a chicken coop.
As a side note: You may be wondering how this can be done with the rising lumber prices. A great resource that very few people seem to know about is the Bonneville County Hatch Pit; many people dump their tree clippings and other yard waste here, but it’s also a place where wood scraps or demolition wood is left as well. It may sound crazy, but as the saying goes ‘one man’s trashed lumber is another man’s treasure’. For no cost, we constructed our entire deck. Check out the Hatch Pit for various wood types; it may not have what you want, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find something of use.
I can’t wait to share the final build.
