Chickens! ...and a workshop

I've been working on two big projects over the last 5 days or so. The first is a chicken coop. We've decided that we want to try raising chickens, mostly for the eggs.

We decided to put the coop next to the barn.

The overgrown area to the left of the barn is the spot.

I completely cleared out the area and then built the coop. I dont have any during pictues but it's basically built out of pressure-treated 2x4's for the framing, chicken wire for the sides, and tin for half of the roof and plastic fencing for the other half.

The area beyond the coop and to the left of the barn will be closed in for another coop soon.

The chickens we are concentrating on are Black Copper Marans, they have very dark, reddish brown eggs that are supposed to be highly prized for their excellent taste. Here is our Marens rooster.

We also have some Dominickers, Cochins, and a few Silkies.

The other project I began working on is a workshop. I really need a place to work and to put all my tools.

The shed behind the kitchen is nice but at 11x11 it's too small.

What I decided to do it tear down the lean-to on the back side of it and add on to the main structure. I will be adding on another 11'. So it will be 22x11. The 11 is a bit smaller that I'd like but I think it will be ok.

The lean-to was so rotted that it only took about 15 minutes to completely tear down by hand. It took longer to haul away the debris.

I pulled up the old blocks to reuse for the new foundation. I had to use a few new blocks.

Next, I pulled the bottom piece of tin off the wall to install the ledger board.

Then I setup the rest of the framing for the joists.

That was as far as I got last night. I was three joists short anyways. I will get them on the way home from work today and also the flooring, I will be using 2x12's just like in the original portion of the shed.

garden

We've been working on a vegetable garden in our back yard. We're going to plant late season crops like broccoli, Collard and Mustard Greens, lettuce, and a few other things. We bought most of them as plants, the rest I started from seed a few weeks back.

I tilled up a small area in the back yard next to the barn that's about 35'x20'.

Then I put up a chicken wire fence.

This is our two Danes checking out my work.

Once I rake it out and hoe the rows I will plant everything.

More yard work and interesting barn finds

We had a few extra hours yesterday so we went back out to Woodbury. I started clearing out the area in front of the barn. Below is a before shot of the barn area:

And here it is as of now:

I still have a long way to go back here but it's start. I started exploring inside the barn and found a few interesting things.

I'm not sure what this first thing is, I'm guessing it's part of an old tractor or some other type of farming implement. The patent date on it is June 22, 1909. Today there is a Stahl company that makes truck bodies and Stahl Headers company but they've only been around since 1946 and 1963 respectively. Anyone know for sure what it is?


And what the heck is this thing?:


I found this plinth block in the barn:

The only other ones it matches is in the main downstairs bathroom. All the rest of them throughout the house look like the one below:


It has nails in it so it was removed from somewhere. The only area that I see it could have come from is in the dining room, a doorway was closed off and turned into a built-in. There was also a few pieces of original trim in the barn but I didn't get any pictures of it.

Next I explored the inside of the house. There is an access panel in the upstairs bathroom that leads to the attic area above the Dining room and Kitchen. I took the panel apart so I could check it out.

We're thinking of eventually expanding the upstairs bathroom into part of this area because right now it's maybe 5'x8' at best. I found this ruler in the attic area, the calender on it is from Nov 1951 to Feb 1953.

I took a few pictures of the house and barn in sepia, I think they turned out pretty good.