Saturday, April 07, 2007

Flocks of chicks and bricks and rocks come

I've been meaning to write about these things for a week or so now, and, although they are completely unrelated, wanted to lump them together in one post just for the fun of the Dr. Seuss reference.

"These things" are...

On a recent visit to Kookoolan Farms (one of our favorite sources for milk, eggs, chicken, laughter, and friendship) we helped clean the chicken brooder and were invited to return later in the week to help transfer a shipment of baby chicks into their new home.
We picked them up, all 200 of them, at the Yamhill post office, much to the relief of the postal employee who had just about had it with the shockingly noisy fluffballs.


Then we drove them to the farm ("peep, peep, peep" all the way home) and put them into the brooder. All together now...Awwww.



Our other excitement this week came in the form of rocks, bricks and sand (thank you, Craig's List) for the foundation of our earth oven. I'd been mulling the idea of an earth oven for several months now, but since I couldn't supply much more than the dough for the project, didn't pursue it any further than reading a book on the subject, always a good idea anyway. This week, during a brief evening escape to the back porch, Bryan and I talked over where, if we built an oven, we would put one. As soon as we pictured it nestled between the raised bed and the fence, just 2 steps from the back porch (of course, everything in our tiny back yard is just steps from the back porch), the project became inevitable.

Still, it surprised me, when the next evening, Bryan showed up with a pile of rocks for the retaining wall/foundation, and the next brought buckets of sand for the interior mold. He dug out the clay soil to save for the oven (finally it will be good for something!) and built the rock wall.

I went online to request that book from my library again.

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