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Chickens are a gardener's friend!
My husband and I got chickens for reasons very similar to yours. We keep ours all year in an A-frame chicken tractor. We only have eight chickens and started them in June in an unused, fenced-in garden plot that was roughly 12X12 feet. (We open one wall of the tractor each morning so they can wander around the garden plot.) By fall, the garden plot had no vegetation and a nice layer of well-tilled soil.
By the end of fall, we moved the tractor into another fenced in garden plot so that the first plot can 'rest' all winter and be ready for planting in the spring.
We are using the A-frame tractor because we move it every other week within the garden plot, and then move it each season to a new garden plot. It is well built and our chickens are able to keep warm in it through the winter. (We don't live too far from you.) We put pine shavings in the top, where their nesting boxes are, and during this muddy part of winter, we put lots of pine shavings on the dirt floor of the coop, too, adding more as needed.
We, too, use rye grass when the garden plots are recovering from planting and waiting for chickens. We also throw fall leaves into whichever garden plot holds the chickens.
In all, the chickens have helped to make some wonderful gardens for our home!
