Hello I'm a newbie :)

Hello all, My name is Julie. After moving across the country from Virginia, last year we bought our dream property, a home & shop on 10 acres surrounded by National Forest in the mountains of beautiful Oregon.

(1)  Are you new to chickens / when did you first get chickens?

We are new to chickens, however my father had many when I was growing up, so we are super excited to get started ourselves!

(2)  How many chickens do you have right now?

We don't have any at the moment, but we ordered 24 from Meyer Hatchery & www.chickenscratchpoultry.com & they should be here the week of May 21st 

(3)  What breeds do you have?

We will have Ameraucanas, Blue Laced Red Wyandottes, Light Sussexs, Olive Eggers, Black Jersey Giants, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Rhode Island Reds, Gold Laced Wyandottes, Golden Laced Polish, Easter Eggers, and Black Sumatras (one female and the one rooster we will have)

(4)  How did you find out about BackYardChickens.com?

We first ran across this site when researching coop designs & fell in LOVE with it! I swear I've spent at least a few min every day for the past month on here, its addicting :)

(5) What are some of your other hobbies?

Well, I've been a professional Glass Artist for 12yrs now, its both my hobby (creating things I love for the fun of it) and my career (making the things that pay the bills, but are still fun). I also love gardening (taking inspiration for glass from flowers & nature), hiking the beautiful Oregon forests, cooking and reading.

(6)  Tell us about your family, your other pets, your occupation, or anything else you'd like to share.

My boyfriend of 3 years, Devon, is the most wonderful man I've ever known. I have a 12yr old daughter (who is also VERY excited about the chickens). We have 2 black lab/rott mixed dogs, 2 cats, a pot bellied pig (named Miss Kitty) and a sugar glider. We plan to add many more in the years to come. Once we get our barn built (a two yr goal) our dream is to have at least 2-3 Gypsy Vanner horses, a couple goats and a couple cows.  

As I said above, I'm a Glass Artist, and Devon has just started blowing glass. We work from our home studio and Devon spends much of his time tending our large veggie garden and fixing up the property. We hardly ever leave our property except to go into town for groceries, supplies or the occasional movie & sushi dinner. 

We are in the process of building our coop right now, once it's finished I will post pictures, so be on the lookout for our new coop! This site has been such a help & so much inspiration! Our friends think we are crazy for the huge project we are undertaking (its quite an involved coop to most people around here) but I know yall will appriciate it & I can't wait to share! 

Thank you!

Haha, how did you know we are hippies? But yes, your right, thats us to a T...I have dreadlocks down to my knees and Devons are to his shoulders, so its kinda hard to hide that fact.

We did live in a town for about 6 months called Deadwood, OR and it was almost all hippies, old & young. The problem was that land was hard to find there and those that sold it wanted way too much so we moved about 2 hours away expecting it to be simmilar. Unfortunately there aren't many others out here like us, we live far out in the mountains and out of the 10 other houses out here, only a couple of the neighbors are actually kind, mostly in their 60s and 70s, other than that we have at least 3 tweeker neighbors (we had NO idea about the meth problem out here till we came face to face with it)...so we mostly keep to ourselves and enjoy our little piece of heaven. We do have a wonderful off the grid neighbor (5 miles away) who is trading Devon work for work & has been a huge help in building our coop and I am so thankful for him!

I'll be posting pics (hopefully soon) of our coop, and it is quite artsy. In fact, Devon & our neighbor are working on it right now, so I'd better get back to helping....

Here is a link to my online gallery.