The Ether Garden knew long before we did it seems. It was last winter when we started discussing the possibility of getting a small urban flock, but we figured we’d best wait until we’d been in the new house for a while before starting down that road. Then one morning I looked out the kitchen window which overlooks the garden and what did I see? A small garden statuette which must have been hidden first by the masses of Daylillies and then by the snow. There it was, the sign that the Ether Garden knew better than we did what was to come- a small hen. She’s remained in that very spot since the moment I first saw her, but thoughts of an urban henhouse have expanded and moved to the forefront of our minds

Fast forward to last month when I received notice that the woman from whom my parents have been getting organic free-range eggs. She was selling off a few of her young laying hens, as she simply had too many and couldn’t properly care for them all! This was amazing news, as I was busy trying to figure out where to find started pullets in breeds we found appealing, without having to rear an order of 50 chicks and hope we could sell the surplus later. I quickly conferred with Lumin about the chicken opportunity and a decision was made- we’d get one each of the varieties she was selling, but we’d build space for four in the hopes of adding one or two more in the future.

So that’s that- we will be getting two lovely ladies very soon, too soon almost! One Rhode Island Red and one Black Star (also known as a Black Sex-Link). Now it’s crunch time, I and must say I do feel a bit like Chicken Little at the moment. There is a coop to build, waterers to make, feeders and feed to buy, bedding to obtain, and a myriad of other things to take care of before the ladies arrive. Having spend my younger years raising backyard chickens (a few of whom my mother captured beautifully in a watercolor study) I’m probably a little better off than some, but there has certainly been a large chickenless gap in my life in which to forget a great many things.

We got some three inch deck screws, a bunch of two by tens cut to appropriate lengths for our four foot by six foot boxes, our drill and screwdriver and hauled it all into the basement for some drilling and screwing. We pre-drilled two holes in the ends of each six foot piece of lumber, laid out the lumber on the floor as it would look in its finished form, and then screwed our deck screws. We used deck screws instead of just regular screws because they’ll be more weather resistant.

After completing our boxes, we took them into the yard and dropped them in a good spot. However, our yard isn’t exactly flat, and the boxes wouldn’t lie horizontally no matter where we put them. I decided that an unlevel garden box would be a problem when it rained, since all the good soil we put into the boxes would just run out of the tilting wooden frames. So, I fixed the problem by leveling them out. I dug a good trench in a few of the corners such that the box could sit level horizontally.

Look at that photo. Check out those rocks we had to dig out. Along with the big rocks, there were bits of glass and chuncks of plastic buried about a foot deep. It looks like our yard is built on clean fill, which isn’t surprising given that in our hilly neighborhood practically everybody’s yard has been leveled out industrially.

After digging the trenches, I used the removed sod to bolster the opposite corners of the boxes. And now we have three big empty garden boxes waiting for our topsoil and compost.