Birdsonghill
Crowing
It is still cold today for here. Hovering about 40 degrees F and north wind again today. I am just taking care of the chickens and staying inside mostly today. I am spending hundreds of dollars in my head while going over the seed catalogs flooding in, now. If I change my mind and get bored I will move more leaves to the composting area for shredding. The chickens run has all the material it can handle most of the time for chicken composting /shredding. I make about 5 cubic yards of finished compost per year *(about two pickup trucks full) in my compost piles. That requires a lot of work for an old man. I may get a yard or a little more from the chickens efforts. The piles get all the chicken litter waste laden with poop from under the roost, leaves garden waste materials and misc. My worms get the kitchen plant waste and some of the garden waste. They make , maybe, a yard of worm castings/compost per season. It is never enough!
It's mostly to keep the goats out more so than the chickens. I strung up some chicken wire in front of half the bed last year using some step-in posts. That seemed effective in keeping them out. I guess they felt it wasn't worth the effort to fly over it... But the chicken wire is ugly and not really something I want right by my house.... 
Doing dishes & washing hands after collecting eggs in freezing cold water stinks.
