Ok... this was the post I had ready to post this morning:

Ok, just a warning for everyone who will read this post: It is going to be very long. So grab a cup of hot or glass cold of tea, and read another story I tell about my life as a country girl on a farm in IN.

Sunday Night:
Mom (with a bit of help from Eric and I) cleaned out the stall we had the bucks in a few weeks back. We got all the yucky, gross, disgusting stuff out, and we made sure we scraped everything, all the way down to the concrete floor. Got everything out, including a few sheets of plywood, a broken down *crib-feeder* we made out of a crib, and a few odds and ends.

Then we took some utility fencing, and put it around the stall on all sides. We used a not-working stapler for about 1hr, then Dad just hammered the staples onto the fence, which took it even longer.

After we got the fencing stapled down, we had to put up a wall top section off a smaller part of the stall. The perimeter of the stall is 10x14, and so we had to make it 10x8 for the chicks, which leaves about 6ft outside the *chick-pen*. Mom built a wall with me and Eric that's about 4ft high, and is the length of the stall. The part of the stall that the chicks are in is about 80sqft pen. That's more than enough room for them. And I'm sure they were happy to be somewhere where they could run around too!

Another task we had to do was the beams that support the ceiling in the stall had holes where the beams run into another beam in the ceiling. The holes were about 1 1/2ft wide, and about 1ft tall. So we covered them with chicken wire. Eric can fit through them, and crawl through to the other beam. If Eric can fit through there, then I'm sure a cat could too. And we don't want a cat in there, of course...so we had to *cat-proof* the holes.

We had Eric climb up on the beam and nail the chicken wire down. Mom couldn't get up there and I hate heights, so Eric had to do it. Soooo after we got that done, the next task was to get the chicks from the garage to the stall, and that was a task indeed. We all suggested something different, carry the chicks down in two smaller boxes, carry the big box down with hald of them in it, or put all the chicks into one of the bog boxes and carry it down like that. We did the last suggestion. We took the side of a crib, and put the box of top of it, and carry it down there like a litter. The bottom was caving in, because it was wet from something, so we had to hold th yucky bottom of it too.

The chicks all laid down on the way down to the barn. When we got them in the stall, and opened the box for them to run out, they all just laid there. I thought something was wrong with them, silly ol' me! They wouldn't go out themselves, so we had to take each of them out, and put them on the sides of the box so they wouldn't run back in. When all were out of the box, we removed the box from the stall. Then we got both waterers and feeders and put them down in the pen. We showed them all the waterers and feeders.

The next thing we did was stand outside the pen and watched while the chicks flew around the new pen for 45mins. By now, it was around 3:15am, I was very tired from working, and so all I wanted to do was to stand there and watch them fly at each other. Eric had a commentary on everything they did: who was flying at each other, who was the loudest of them all... Well, after the 45min was up, we had one more task to do before we would be able to go up to the house, to our beds: make sure the door was *cat-proof*.

We closed the top and bottom door to see how it would be when it was closed. There was an uneven gap where the two door came together that was about 6in. We took some small nails and hammered them into the door. Then we took a piece of chicken wire and nailed it to the top door, so the top would stay permanently . We hooked the bottom of the chicken wire on the nails, that way we could open the door when we were in need of going in, and making sure there was no gap for any stray cats that might want a piece of raw chicken, with feather, neck and all, for dinner. I know, cats' can be so groddy!

Then we all came up to the house, after showing Pemberly what was in the pen, (from the outside of the pen, but inside the barn). When we got up to the house, Amanda was holding a sleeping Queen Lucy, while watching Stargate Atlantis. We all got cleaned up and joined her. It was 4am when the girls went to bed. Mom laid down on the couch. Eric and I watched Animal Rescue until about 4:45, when we shut the TV off and told Mom we were going to bed. I went to my room, slipped into my pajama pants and set my alarm clock for 9:45am, hoping I'd be able to get up at that time. I slipped into bed, and the last thing I remember was saying to myself how I have to get up early in the morning to give the chicks more feed and water...then sleep took over me...

I'm not sure when I got that day, very late I think. I think I covered everything about building the chick pen, right? Mom wrote a post about building the chick pen, so if you want to read what she wrote about, go to her blog: Seeking Rest in the Homestead.

Rachel

Don't forget to stop over at the Milk and Honey Tea House to read the latest about my life as a young lady on a farm in IN!