feel free
Moving is hard. Moving with chickens is harder. But a lot a bit of kindness got us through.
“Feel free.”
No two words could fill me with greater dread.
When I felt free, anything could happen. Big messes. Lots of projects. Lower hygiene standards. For me “feel free” always kicks off a personal crisis, a mental rebuke of my worst habits, a reigning in of some of my more basic instincts. Because when people said “feel free,” they didn’t actually mean walk-around-naked-eating-cake free. They meant something more like “take care of your big needs in a way that fits in the standard of polite society.”
The trouble was, understanding “polite society” came a lot less easily to me than unhindered freedom.
“The trouble was, understanding polite society came a lot less easily to me...”
When the homeowners said it to us - so cool and casually - I could feel the sweat cooling on my back despite the 90 degree weather and an unimpeded sun. This house would be ours in a matter of a few weeks and a lot of paperwork. Until then, it was still theirs to do as they liked. Feeling free here was an awfully big responsibility.
We began building the coop at a polite hour in the early evening - not too early, not too late, not interfering with dinner or the work hour, or really anything else we could think to interfere with. We didn’t want the chickens’ early occupancy to... I really don’t want to say “ruffle any feathers” but at the same time, it’s an apt metaphor.
Our goal was to prevent chicken homelessness. Selling our coop along with our house had seemed like the easiest way to reduce the burden of the move. Pulling apart the run, disassembling the structure until it was broken into manageable parts, all seemed like an effort whose product was not equal to the sum of its parts.
Until you realized the implications of three loose chickens in a moving van.
“...Until you realize the implications of three loose chickens in a moving van.”
I spent many nights awake wondering how we’d pull it off. Do the chickens get a basement bedroom? Could they live in a dog cage? Should we just start over with a new flock come spring and in the meantime enjoy the bone broth proceeds?
And then those two simple words. “Feel free.” To build the coop early. To save the chickens. To begin to believe this place was our home.
It wasn’t the only kindness that got us past the move and brought me back to the land of sleep. The plywood we used - varying in thicknesses, warped in some places and not in others - came from my dad’s stash of project leftovers. The 2-by-4s that made up the base of the coop came from the same place; we mitigated their different lengths and heights by manipulating the land they would stand on. We used levels. We made it work.
We covered it in Tyvek paper and shingled the roof with shingles we found lying on the floor of the barn, ripped open but still viable. And finally, as soon as my dad finished the siding on his own house, we scraped up the leftovers and gave the coop its final flourish - a dark brown siding that offered protection from what is bound to be a harsher winter than they are used to.
If you didn’t take a good look at its skeleton, if you didn’t know it’s story, I think you might consider this coop rather professional. But the story is really where the heart of this semi-farm lies.