Beavers and chickens

Big news! And I mean really big: we found the beaver dam yesterday morning. No pictures since we were mucking about, but it's located east of the creek a few hundred yards and it's huge! I guess, technically, it's two dams, but they are right next to each other in a line and work together to block the entire swamp and all the water. No wonder the driveway floods in the rainy season.

Now, of course, the real work starts. Our plan as of now is to breach the dam in a few places (where there are dry creek beds on the other side) and put in beaver deceivers or beaver pipes. Basically, we would run a long, wide, flexible pipe perpendicularly through the dam, held in place on the creek bed by tying it to short pieces of rebar sunk into the ground. This way even if/when the beavers rebuild the dam, water is still able to flow. That's the plan; we will have to see if it's possible. If not we may look into trapping. If anyone reading like to trap, we've got at least fifty beavers so come get them! Apparently they are quite tasty and make nice top hats, too.

The other bit of news is that after living here for a few weeks, I've decided that the chicken coop is located in the least convenient place possible. One reason to keep chickens is that they are very helpful in the garden; they weed, till, and eat insects, and you can compost their manure to make really good fertilizer. However, the chicken coop is on the complete opposite side of the house from the garden. I tried to herd them over there myself one day, which was such a slapstick comedy of errors that I decided NEVER AGAIN. In addition, the current coop is not quite right for our needs, and is too dark and unventilated for my liking. So after some thinking, I've decided to build a new coop inside the greenhouse. Having a greenhouse/coop is apparently an old permaculture idea which benefits birds and plants alike, and I figure building one wall in an existing structure will be easier and quicker than constructing an entire new building.

Above is the north end of our greenhouse. I just realized when I started thinking about this project that the greenhouse is shaped like an arrow that points south. So while the south end has some funny short walls and odd angles, the north end is nice and square, and has a big window.

I want to build the fourth coop wall at the second stud, so the coop will be about four feet deep and 9'-5" wide. These walls were insulated and then clad with Mylar film, which when peeled back revealed some horrifying things such as a DEAD SQUIRREL that I accidentally TOUCHED with my HAND. The insulation was all chewed up and full of sunflower seed husks. I bagged up all the film and insulation this morning and got a good look at the structure; unfortunately the northwest corner where the walls meet the floor is all rotten and full of insect holes, probably from carpenter ants. I'll be sure to blog along with all the fascinating/disgusting prep work, but for now I've made a little sketch to help visualize the coop:

Bok bok! (And whatever sound beavers make.)