At the beginning of January 2019 my husband was building me the Fort Knox of chicken coops in our meadow beside the house.

From trail cam footage we knew we had raccoons, bobcats, foxes, coyotes, and skunks in the area, as well as roaming neighborhood cats and dogs, so to keep the future chickens protected, he built a large shed, then later framed out the run area and covered it with hardware cloth (metal mesh). All around this future coop we buried more hardware cloth (not poultry wire, that isn’t strong enough), to prevent animals digging into the coop and runs.

January 2019 was also the month I started this blog. Hard to believe that has been over seven years, rapidly heading to eight.