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Sep 26, 2017

Winter Coop Prep, Re-habbing Bath Towels, Easy Pear BlackberryTart



Winter Coop Prep-
We have a lovely weekend with mild,sunny weather, great after the cold and heavy rain! With colder weather gradually settling in it's time to look at the components of winterizing our coop. Dave was cleaning the outside house windows with our handy Windex scrubber. I had him do the upper coop window. It's recycled and we open and close as needed. There's hardware cloth inside the window where a screen would be. Below the window is a frame I had Dave build with hardware cloth. We use it in the warm weather for lots of good airflow and ventilation. In the late fall we pop it out and put in anther (recycled) window. We'll remove the tomatoes first, see below- 


We also have a screen in our $10.00 Habitat for Humanity store door. I leave it uncovered until it gets really cold, then I staple plastic over it on the inside. I can open as needed if it warms up-

Note another area below the nesting box, open all year

There's a vent in the roof of the coop for more air. It's a flexible system and work well for us and "the girls". They had a blast free-ranging Sunday afternoon-



Gwynne looking much better now that her molt is over, feathers are back!

Rosie the Rhode Island Red and Ellie a Barred Rock

What's over there?



Re-habbing Bath Towels-
I love our apple green bath towels from Ikea (several years old) but the hems were getting a bit ratty on a few, see above. I went to the local fabric store with a washcloth and bought matching thread. I set up the sewing machine, all better, for $1.50 spool of thread-





Easy Pear Blackberry Tart-
I had the last six of our pears left, so I bought some puff pastry at for about $3.00 at Trader Joe's. I thawed, unrolled, rolled the edges, put on parchment, sprinkled with cinnamon/sugar. Topped with our pears, and some frozen homegrown blackberries. More cinnamon/sugar, baked for 25 mutes, perfection! I topped mine with TJ's custard ice cream, heavenly! I will do the next batch with some of our peaches :)  Easy, low cost, fast dessert!!!!

8 comments:

Rain said...

Hi Nancy :) Your tart looks delicious! And look at your birds, they look great and I really like your chicken coop too.

Pioneer Woman at Heart said...

I just let my ladies out to free range yesterday. The day before, "Mr. Hawk" was flying above. They were super happy yesterday.

Nancy In Boise said...

Thanks! And the tart is really fast to put together too. The coop is made up mostly of recycled materials and it fits well in our yard

Nancy In Boise said...

Yes it's nice to let them out and we only have small hawks in our area here so they're no concern for us

Susan said...

Your girls look so good! Mine are all in some stage of molting and look awful - I've upped their protein so that should help them grow a nice abundance of feathers. I found some very nice towels at Goodwill once, all that was wrong was a little unraveling at the hem - did the same thing and they are still going strong. Too bad most people can't be bothered to spend such a small amount of both money and time to repair them. That dessert looks so GOOD!

Nancy In Boise said...

Thanks Susan, giving them raw sunflower seeds really seemed to help! Yes, and easy fix, and the tart was great! I think I'll do peach soon....

Mama Pea said...

Your chickens sure look happy and healthy! We've had so much rain lately (we're about floating) that the area where everyone seems to congregate in the poultry yard was an awful muddy mess until hubby sacrificed our last two bales of straw yesterday and covered all the yuck. Everyone (including we humans!) seemed to really appreciate the dry ground . . . and for the birds maybe even some seeds they could find left in the straw!

Don't you love this time of year when it actually feels good to turn on the oven and bake something fallish and yummy?!

Nancy In Boise said...

Thanks Mama, yes a muddy run is tough. I love fall and baking fits right in :)

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