Fun With Crowbars And Sledgehammers

Well ventilated!

I’ve said it about chainsaws, but it applies to these “toys” as well:  if you can’t have fun with a crowbar and a sledgehammer, you just can’t have fun.

No, I’m not talking about some weird WWE cage match with toolshed weapons (although that may have a certain appeal to it).

I started remodeling our chicken coop today.  There’s no way of telling how old the coop is.  I could radio-carbon date the wood, but I hear that process is kinda pricey.  The newest third of the coop is still in pretty good shape.  The oldest two-thirds needs a new roof.  Today I finished tearing off that roof.

The first picture you see is the coop with the roof that eventually came off. The second picture is my progress at the end of the first day.  Notice the nice hole in the roof.  The third picture was taken after my second day of demolition.  Notice the huge sag in the lower wall and the sag in the rafters.  That wall and the rafters will be rebuilt.  Don’t you like how the pile of junk grows and grows?

There's a hole in the roof!

So why am I bothering to blog about a construction project?  Believe me, this is not about me showing off my construction prowess (it’s more of a comedy of errors).  Its about motivation, action and accountability.

Motivation: Jodi and I want to expand our chicken flock.  Ideally, we would like to supply our entire little town with eggs.  We started out with 2 guineas, 6 hens and a rooster about a year ago.  Between bad fences and hungry dogs and owls, we’re down to one hen (who still gives us an egg a day).  We’d love to buy laying hens, but they’re very hard to come by.  That means we’ll probably be ordering a bunch of chicks from a hatchery or a semi-local farm.  Chicks need a dry and warm place to mature. Clearly, the old coop wasn’t going to work as-is.  The old section of roof was about 12 feet X 16 feet and covered with old tar paper and even older tin.  Snow and rain left that section of the coop nice and muddy.  Although mud is good for facials, it is definitely not good for raising baby chicks.

Action: Good intentions mean nothing if you don’t do anything.  As much as I’d like to wake up one morning and magically have a baby-chick-ready chicken coop, that would never happen.  I needed to start.  Hence the crowbar and sledgehammer fun.  Without the initial action, the project would never get started, let alone completed.

The roof is gone!

Accountability: I am convinced that posting this project on my blog will help me get the construction project done faster.  There are still several days worth of work ahead.  Setting ties, building walls and a new door, putting up rafters, more roof support, then tin. None of it is rocket science, but it’s good, physically tough work. And if it doesn’t get done, the flock doesn’t grow, and the town doesn’t get their fresh eggs.

The Bigger Picture: How much of life is like this project?  Quite a bit, I think.  I tend to get stuck on different phases in different situations.  Sometimes I don’t see the need around me (a problem with motivation).  Sometimes I have a tough time taking the first step (a problem taking action).  Most of the time I have a great idea and get started on it, but I don’t see it to completion (a problem asking for accountability).

Tonight at youth group we discussed Jesus’ teaching on meeting others’ needs in practical ways, then we talked about helping a family in town who just went through a horrendous car accident.  One student came up with the great idea of making a get-well banner for them with signatures from everyone in school.  Great idea. The action needs to be taken tomorrow to start the project and then it needs to get finished by the end of the day.  As their adult “leader” I’ll need to help them along the way to make sure it gets done.

Sometimes we’re in the position of needing accountability and sometimes we’re the ones to help keep others accountable.  Which side have you been on lately?

7 Chickens + 1 Dog + Hole in Fence = 2 Chickens

It’s the end of the free range chickens at Fort Doherty.

My two dogs just turned 2 years old last week.  Maybe their feelings were hurt because I didn’t buy them any new doggie toys.  Maybe they passed some right of passage age in dog years.  Maybe it was time for my boys to learn an important lesson about the circle of life.

As I was getting ready to enjoy my morning cup of coffee, I hear my lovely wife say “Um, Brad.  Dillon (my female dog) is carrying a chicken around in her mouth.”  So much for enjoying that morning java.

Yep, Dillon had Fenzi (my favorite hen, named by Brody) in her jaws as she pranced around looking for a good place to enjoy her next course of her birthday breakfast.  Yes, her next course.  After I put her back in the dog pen, I found the remains of 3 other hens (Henrietta, the yellow hen of “Yellow Hen Not Peck Me” fame, and a gorgeous gray hen) scattered around the yard and our rooster, who was dumb enough to get into the dog pen, where Frisco (my male dog who never gets out of the pen) got to enjoy some Cornish game rooster.  At least the rooster put up a fight… Frisco had some scratches on his legs.

All was not lost.  My 2 oldest hens, Miss Red and Henry (named by Brock) are still alive and kicking.  They are not the prettiest to look at, but we still get one egg a day.

What are the lessons to be learned here?

1. Don’t let chickens roam free in front of dogs behind a shoddy fence. Most of the fence is solid, except for one 6-foot stretch that is pretty patched together.  All it takes is one weak link…
2. Don’t blame dogs for being what they are.
3. Don’t throw in the towel after a mistake. Even though this was entirely my fault, I’m not giving up on the poultry experiment just yet.
4. Wringing a chicken’s neck is surprisingly easy. Fenzy was skill sort-of alive when Dillon let her go.  No, we didn’t eat her.  We’re not that pioneer yet.
5. Little boys aren’t bothered by chicken carnage. As we walked out to survey th damage, they say Dillon chowing on the rooster and all they said was “Look, there’s the rooster.”  The watched like it was no big deal.  Yep, those are my boys.

Trading Geek Tricks for Poultry Tips

A hundred years ago every old west town had a gun slinger, a sheriff, a town drunk, and a bunch of town folk.  At least that’s the way it looked in several black and white western movies I’ve seen.

I’m turning out to be the town geek in Branson.  There’s one other guy in town that is the official tech guy for the online school.  He and I get together and talk geek once in a while just for fun.  I think it would be dangerous for he and I to go to a Best Buy together.  People send me their tech issues, which is cool with me.  I like the challenge, and I like helping people out.  I really love teaching people how to do the fun stuff for themselves, but there are those that just want me to fix it so they can move on with life and the things they really enjoy (which probably isn’t making nifty spreadsheets or web gadgets).  In the next several weeks, I’ll begin posting more articles on this blog about software and tech stuff that actual normal people can use to make their tech lives easier.

On the other side of the coin, I’m learning that I really like two activities that others in our little town know a lot more about than I do: vegetable gardening and raising chickens (yes, I’m a Doherty and I’m really liking this chicken thing).  There are several sweet older ladies in town that I pepper with veggie and poultry questions whenever I see them.  They are more than happy to indulge my rookie questions and hopefully I can avoid some pitfalls along the way.

In our town, it’s all about relationships more than the knowledge itself.  Sure, I can do a Google search and find out strategies for raising baby chicks… but that’s not nearly as fun as asking Miss Margaret, out town chicken expert.  And Miss Margaret always has cookies.  Hopefully Miss Margaret will see that I really care about spending time with her way more than I care about learning what she knows about chickens.

That’s what Jesus is constantly trying to show us.  It’s not about the facts.  It’s not’s about the head knowledge.  It’s about experiencing a genuine relationship with him and with other people as we journey through life.  You can Google lots of theological answers on the web, but it’s way more fun to find someone that’s been on the journey that you can learn from.  Who is that for you?