Our new chicken pen around the asparagus patch
December 02, 2010
This is the time of year when we work on projects that we didn't have time for during the harvest season. So finally, we finished our new checken pen. We have surrounded our 100' x 50' asparagus patch with polyester mesh that will keep the foxes, raccoons and hawks out and our chickens in. The first day we put the chickens in something chewed through the fence overnight. So we reinforced it along the bottom with chicken wire, and the chickens survived another month uneventfully.
Above you can see the rooster wandering among the asparagus fronds. The chickens will ferilize the plants and eat the asparagus beetles that give us so much trouble.
You might be surprised to hear that Northrop Grumman sponsored this chicken pen! Some of their employees were in town for a women's leadership conference, and joined us for a morning of digging holes for the posts and laying out the weed barrier around the outside. They also paid for the supplies. Thank you!!
For now our chickens are in the shed that serves as their winter home. Once the asparagus harvest is finished in June, we'll put them back into their new pen. With such a big space to fill, we'll have to buy more chickens! With some luck we might finally have some eggs to sell next year, and a much healthier asparagus crop in 2012.
You can see a few more photos in our 2010 photo album in the right margin of this blog.