Little, tiny work gloves.

When I woke up this morning, it looked a lot like rain. Even the weather from Environment Canada seemed to be calling for some showers. Nevertheless, I sped into town to get my roofing screws; I ran out yesterday and being so close to finishing the roof, I was not going to have the rain slow my progress today. I made the mistake of buying inch-and-a-half screws, instead of the two inch that I would need later, when it came time to put on the ridge cap. Of course, I didn't realize this until it was time to put the cap on, by which time I had used nearly half of the box of the shorter screws, so it was back into town -- half an hour each way -- for a ten dollar box of screws.

With the last screw in the ridge cap, the major construction phase of the chicken coop came to an end. The door is on, the window is in, which now leaves the insulating; the interior finishing: panelling, nesting boxes, electrical and a roost; the fence and related gates. Not much, really.

The chicken coop, minus the door:

I can't leave Jenn alone for a second. The other day, I turned my back for an instant and when I turned back, we were the owners of a new bunny. I had made the mistake of agreeing to let Hunter go to PetsMart to play with the kittens through the glass; sometimes, if we are close by and Hunter has been good, this is her treat. She pulls out the long feather-duster-looking toys from the display and waves them at the cats in the store. They bat at the air, follow the toy with their jerky head movements and generally entertain her. This day, Hunter was the distraction while Jenn went and adopted a bunny. I think the pair of them had it planned for a while because it was pulled off with such ease and subtlety. However, the two bunnies seem to be getting along, once the chasing, stamping and kicking fits ended.

The new bunny: ('Peter' to any who need to know it's name.)

Lately, Hunter has been helping me feed the dogs. She really likes to come out and put on her little work gloves, which I didn't even know existed. They are hilarious: wee little work gloves. Anyway, since we feed fish to the dogs, it is nice to have a pair of gloves so that we are not going through a tube of toothpaste every week. Yes, I said toothpaste. I have found out that it is the only thing that gets the smell of fish off your hands. One of the employees at Herbert Fisheries told me this, and I guess he'd know.

When Hunter helps me feed the dogs, I don't have to do a thing, except carry the fish bucket and feed Dart and Horton; even Horton could be fed by her. Hunter likes to root around in the bucket and then make sure she has the perfect piece for each dog, which she'll double check with me. Then, she'll walk through the dogs' area and put the chunk of fish on their house. I find the whole thing rather funny and I am really happy that she likes to do this.

Rooting around for that 'perfect' piece:

Feeding

Proud of herself and happy to have helped.

It seems that we have a bear around our property. We had a mother and a cub last year and I think that this is the same pair this year. I have already seen them together earlier this spring and then last week the yearling cub was in the lower dog run; the one we don't use anymore, thankfully.

The local Ministry of Natural Resources has published a guide to being 'Bear Aware' and I think that we violate almost all of their recommendations. We have dog food stored outside, we have two freezers full of fish and we have so many fruiting trees around the property that it would be impossible to pick up the fruit. So far, the bears have stayed away from anything important.

The bear.

As it would happen, the photos are rather dark, so really, all there is to see is a black blob. It's a bear. I swear.

Progress has been made on the chicken coop, althought I haven't taken any pictures lately. We picked up our roofing metal the other day and I should be able to get it installed tomorrow if things go well; I have fish to cut, a trip to Killarney again, for more fish, and the other half of the roof to strap before the metal can go on.

Another week has passed and what have I done?

Another twenty-eight degree day has come and gone and I find myself a little afraid of what the summer -- the actual summer -- has in store if the end of May and early part of June are any indication. Already, we have June bugs flying around and berries on the Hawthorns; perhaps at this accelerated rate, we'll get snow in September, although I somehow doubt it.

The stray dog that was around our place for the past few weeks has been successfully adopted. After a week of posting his picture with a 'found dog' label on the internet and looking around for 'lost dog' posters we decided it was time to put him up for adoption. We have been quite busy taking calls and emails and it looks as though he has found a new home. A couple came by on Friday to try him out for the weekend and I have just heard from them that they would like to keep him.

This past week has more or less been taken up by my construction of the chicken coop; the Chateau Frontenac of the chicken world as it is slowly becoming. Day one saw me leveling the floor with the help of a string line. Once that was done, I built the frame for the floor of the thing: 12 feet by 8 feet. Jenn has read that chickens need a certain amount of square footage, so these are her dimensions. In fact, the whole design is Jenn's basically: I am just the contractor. I managed to get the floor sheathing on on day one, also.

Day 1

Once I had re-laid the floor sheathing -- I realised that I had it on sideways: basically, the longitudinal strength was running horizontally -- I started to frame the sides. Jenn does not want any windows on the West or North side, so I was able to complete those for day two. I suppose I could have managed to get one, if not both of the remaining walls done, but we didn't have the door and window yet so I couldn't make the openings in the framing. Instead, I took the last bit of the day off for a (self described) well deserved beer.

Day 2

The coop stayed as it looked in day two for a few days while we waited for Uncle Rick, this crazy pack rat of a man who collects junk and then sells it to people at slightly elevated prices to open. He's only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and if people look hard enough, they can find something worthwhile. We knew he had a bunch of windows and we were dreading how much he'd try to charge for them; he's not above haggling, but he approaches it as a cat does a mouse: eventually, the mouse loses. It is almost as though he doesn't want to sell the stuff. However, he is going out of business at the end of the year and we were able to get our windows for a great price. He even threw in the matching one (with a broken pane) for free. Not something he is known to do. The window that we are going to use is rather large for a chicken coop. It measures 47.5 inches by 41.5 inches which is large for a bunch of chickens, I think. The picture below is of the window; a 4-pane plus screen unit, all of which slides and I have left it in the back of the truck to show the dimensions of it.

The window.

Now with a window and a door to measure, I set to making the remaining two walls. Once they were up, I checked everything for square and was only an inch out on the diagonals, so I was happy with that. A few taps with the hammer and I was able to get the whole thing one eighth of an inch out of square. I can live with that; let's hope the chickens can.

Day 3

After getting the walls up, I realized that a half-dozen nails were likely not going to be enough to finish the job, so I compiled a materials list for the next phase, making sure nails were on it, and Jenn and I headed into town. Let me say here that, with the exception of Chapters, I don't like big box stores. Even Chapters manages to not carry what I am looking for, so it would be fair to say that I don't like big box stores, which is why we found ourselves in the parking lot of Home Depot. Materials list in hand, Jenn and I go in to find, buy and load what we need as fast as possible and get home. Home Depot was not only a nuthouse of activity, being a Saturday, but it was full of helpfull staff who were no help at all. How someone can be that stunned at work and still retain a job is beyond me. On top of everything else, Home Depot, 'the contractors choice' didn't have what we were looking for, namely: lumber. We decided instead to go to a local lumberyard and buy what we needed there and it is a good thing we did because they were .30 cents cheaper per board and the lumber was nicer than any of the stock Home Depot normally carries, which just goes to confirm my dislike of big box, small brain stores.

Today was roof day. I spliced together two eight foot two by sixes to make a sixteen foot ridge board. Once I had it in place and secured, I measured the angle for my rafters and proceeded to cut them all, then I nailed them all in place. I expect that I would have had more done today, but it was go get fish day, so the three of us drove down to Killarney again, ate lunch and picked up our fish. The chicken coop sits as below, awaiting eave ladders and roof strapping. The rafters will be cut shorter as soon as I find out the measurements of our roofing metal.

Day 4