Jack thought it might be a good idea to get his Wednesday guest post up on a Wednesday – –

This week saw two important tasks finally achieved.

Back in November we were worried about whether our chickens might be frozen over the winter, but we discovered that leaving their poop lying in the coop would keep it fairly warm. So a win for everyone! But, of the course, the chickens always come home to roost, so I finally had to ‘muck out the byre/coop’ this week and put fresh straw over their floor. It’s probably a very good job I don’t have any sense of smell.

The other job was really odd. When we moved here we were a bit surprised to find that all the upstairs room had doors, but none of the ground floor rooms had. But we have five cats that we need to corral from time to time. So a few months ago I installed a folding door between our ‘ceilidh room’ and our sitting room/library. That was so that we would have some possibility of shutting the cats somewhere.

But it didn’t really help much to keep them out of the kitchen where they are inclined to get under our feet – or even on the counters! So, today I installed another folding door where the kitchen heads to the sitting room.

Fitting these doors is meant to be a breeze, but nothing ever is! The available space in an old house like ours is never the same size as the door, so a fair bit of ‘surgery’ was required. Despite the relatively light weight of the doors it’s still heavy going to position them. The other problem is when you have to add a length of wood to mount the top rail to and can’t find the right length of screws to fix it.

However everything worked out eventually.

The chickens are happy and so is Wendy – – -which means all is right with the world. Eggs for everyone.