After the Great Mink Incident of 2009, Kelly and our friend, Rose, boarded up an old door on the south side of the chicken coop. The door had significant gaps and was showing the effects of time, plus we never used it.

This year, we’re planning to provide the birds a pasture area instead of letting them have free run of the farm. They’ll still get to scratch for bugs, eat grass and do all the things they’re supposed to do, just not everywhere. We’ve noticed that turkeys won’t think twice about digging up a garlic snack, and chickens think that we planted lettuce just for them.

We made the decision to fence in the area to the south of the chicken coop, and that means we had to replace the old, boarded-up door. So, this weekend, I enlisted the aid of a trusty assistant, Jackson, and set to work. We had another door on hand (hooray for old farms!), so we removed the existing door, replaced some hinges, attached the new door and installed a latch. Perfect! It took a few hours, but it was time well spent with an almost-eight year-old.

-Brian