shells

As of today, the coop now has four complete walls. As I nailed the last plywood panel in place, I thought: a shell! I suppose, technically, it's not a complete shell, because I have yet to hang the door and windows, but still...

And because I'm completely pooped, I'll let the photographs of the progress over the past nine days mostly speak for themselves.

first the north wall

challenging to get the angle cut to follow the roofline--if you look closely, you can see the gap widen to the right

then the west wall

Then, before sheathing the walls that have windows, we tacked the hardware cloth over the window openings and along the skirt underneath. Of course, I had forgotten to tack the hardware cloth skirt on the west side before putting up the sheathing, so I spent a little time under the coop tacking it on the inside of the structural members and getting a chicken's eye view of the cool coop crawl space.

that was a muddy day, thus the beach towel between me and the ground

The south and east walls went up in stages because of a temporary materials shortage...

As I finished each day of work, I'd climb inside and sit, savoring the structure-ness of it all, feeling the breeze waft through, imagining how the chickens will experience the space. It began to feel quite wonderful to have created an actual building, practically habitable, from the ground up--something I've never done before. It makes me feel self-sufficient, competent, empowered.

Having reached that point, I had to go away for a few days for work (actually some of the most satisfying lawyering I've done--restoring three wrongfully terminated musicians to their jobs). Today, though, we were back at work. And now:

The coop shell is not the only one I'm thinking about today. Our five new chicks will ship out on Monday as day-old hatchlings. That means that today, they are just one day away from poking their tiny beaks through their shells and emerging into the world. And in honor of tomorrow's hatch day (on Mother's Day, no less), here is a quite beautiful video of a chick hatching (although I wish it kept going until the chick actually got to its feet!):