Berries and Herbs

We were pretty busy all this week. It's coming down to the end of the month, which is Cupcake's silly season every month. Lawman busied himself during the week planting a half dozen or so blueberry bushes, a few thorn-less raspberry bushes and a clothes line.
We start out with the big project we finished on the weekend, the new chick run inside the coop de ville.

Regular followers may remember that we had a four coop system working at one time. We started the chicks in a small plastic shed that had a tunnel to the first coop we bought when we started out with six birds (we were such amateurs) that had a fenced in run leading to the coop we built three or four years ago. As the chicks grew, we would move them from one coop to the next until they were big enough to fend for themselves with our grown birds. We would then move them, two at a time, from the big coop to the coop de ville. This caused drama on a grand scale, because the birds we moved insisted on going back to the big coop at night, so we had to carry them back again. Moving 50 birds at a time is time consuming to say the least.
Cupcake hit on the idea over the winter to build a small run inside the coop de ville where we could start the chicks, and as they grew they would know the coop de ville was their home and it would eliminate the carrying. Lawman drew up an idea of how to make that work, and we put it in to action this weekend. We started off with the leftover 2X4's we had from the roosting areas.

Of course, fifteen minutes into construction, Lawman was bleeding. It's officially spring.

We designed a box type run with hinged openings up top to allow access to food and water, and a flap style door to allow us access to the heater so we can adjust it to the growth of the chicks.

Then we used chicken wire to surround the box and run area under the nesting boxes to give the chicks some room to run and jump and play.

Charlotte is our broody girl, she's on top of a bakers dozen of lavender eggs that are do to hatch this coming week. She wasn't phased by the construction at all, she just kept on keeping on. The rest of the flock almost lost their minds. Who knew there was so much drama in a flock of birds?

Before we started on the run, we had to replace the battery in Cupcake's lawn mower. The Alaphageek family gifted us a Craftsman mower last year, and Cupcake claimed it as her own. The only thing wrong with it was a dead battery. We would jump start it and it would run/restart just fine, but the battery would die after sitting all week. We fixed that little problem, now it's smooth sailing. Another big "Thank You" to the AG family, we sing your praises every time we use it.

The old battery was original equipment Craftsman Die Hard with a stamp of 7-07, so it lasted ten years.
Our second smaller project this weekend was planters. Cupcake saw a DIY project a while back using burlap sacks and clothes baskets to make strawberry planters for your deck. She ordered some sacks and wee bought some really cute copper baskets from Target. We dug up our remaining strawberry plants from the garden patch to use in the first basket. We had to buy some more sets from Lowe's to finish out the rest.

We have a lot more room on the deck, so this week we plan on buying a couple more of the wire baskets and making at least two more of these. We love us some strawberries.
While we were elbow deep in dirt, we planted Cupcake's herbs in the deck boxes.

We had already thrown a few leftover lettuce seeds in one of the planters, and they have sprouted.

One of the last things Lawman planted was a clothes line. We found one on the cheap at a new farm supply store in Radford so we thought we would give it a try.

It's kind of low to the ground, just like Cupcake.
The food portion of this week is short and sweet, again, just like Cupcake. We started the week off with a boil.

After the boil, Pop needed a haircut. Lawman's barber shop opened for business.

Later in the week we brought back an old favorite, Paprika Chicken.

And to go along with it, we tried a new recipe for dinner rolls.

This is the recipe Lawman has been looking for. This one calls for eggs in the mix. It is the closest he's ever come to store bought dinner rolls so we're going to stick with this recipe from now on. We kind of dug into them as soon as they came out of the oven, so we ruined the "after" picture. We're pretty sure there will be another opportunity very soon.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K