Totally Chicken

I got side tracked while trying to work on our first project, the garden. Heath has been working all day then going to wrestling practice and the two youngest have been hanging with Mom. When they sleep or play for a min, I clean or try to catch up one of the other chores. We were also lucky to have a lot of play dates this past week. We even discovered an awesome dairy farm that is close to us, thanks to my girlfriend Beth.
The hubby and I did find a little time to talk about the garden and even walked the yard to try and get more ideas. We started discussing where we could place the trees and planter boxes but then something happened...
Remember when I said that we can't do anything on a small scale? Well it happened again. We were planning our attack on the yard for garden coordinates and next thing I know, we are researching which breed of chicken would be a good fit and which ones lay colorful eggs! I told you, it never fails. I can't say how it happened but now we are totally chicken crazy! Heath researched our county laws and home owners association stuff and we are good to go. Many hours of reading... wait for it... blogs :-) and websites I've been able to narrow it down to 3 different breeds and a beautiful chicken coop. I am sure some farmer would not approve of the words 'beautiful and chicken coop' in the same sentence, o well.

And again, since I'm a visual person, here are some pictures of the coop I want and the breeds of chickens that we think will be a good fit for the fam bam.





I can't tell you how many sites we looked at before I stumbled upon this coop but once I saw it, I knew I was done looking. This is it! I found the coop on www.HeatherBullard.com and she even had blueprints drawn up. (Farmer is really shaking his head now!)

I probably have a 5% working knowledge of chickens after reading about different breeds that would be a good fit. So with my new found wisdom we have decided that the hens we want are (drum roll please)...




An Australorp hen. This breed was ranked #1 by a lot of people for their ability to withstand heat and cold, lay eggs consistently and they lay Large to X-Large brown eggs.





An Easter Eggers hen. They lay medium green and blue eggs. How cool is that? and last but not least





A Plymouth Rock hen. I love the black and white feathers!

All of these ranked in the top 5 on BackyardChicken.com and a couple of other websites recommended these breeds for their temperament. I think that is important considering our kids and our friends children will be around these birds.

We have a lot to learn about gardening, fruit trees and now chickens but if we waited until we knew everything before doing it we would never get anything done!
I am ecstatic that we are doing all of this to the backyard. The family will get to work with the land and even though it is a very small scale I know that it will have a big impact. The memories we can make just creating all of this will be worth every second!
Fingers crossed that in a year from now we have our garden, orchard and chicken coop all up and producing an abundance of good food for our family and friends.