Pain in the butt

Tiny carrot in my bed...uh, that didn't sound right

Weekend is over and I have a hell of a pain all over my body, having used almost all muscles, even those I didn't think would be used by building a coop. One such muscle is my buttocks.
So, the weekend started off not so well. In fact on Friday I got sick, and had to try my best to get well again by Saturday in order to start on time.

I guess the motivation did its job cause on Saturday I was feeling fine. First thing I did was to go out with Tora on a leash for a walk. It was around 5 A.M. and as soon as he got out he started acting weird and sniffing like when he does when he finds a new toy he can eat, like a lizard.

I checked what it was he had found and it looked like a very long lizard. Looking closer, it was actually a snake slithering away slowly. I don't think it was mamushi, but I treated it the same way. I put Tora inside, armed myself with a 2 meter stick and a couple of bricks, and killed it. I think they like to hide in the thick bushes of ugly, so I decided to clean up properly and get rid of all the runners and climbers that are infesting my garden.

After dying, its body kept moving, so I bashed its head in just to be sure. Still it was moving 15 minutes later.

The tiny cute leaves that climb and twist themselves up other plants, when left alone turn into real thick and ugly wooden creatures. I saw that while cleaning up. It took me a good 2 hours to just clean up a small bit of the front yard. I think maybe that is when I started pulling all my unusual muscles. I think I have uprooted almost all of them now.
Then I was ready to build the coop, but of course then the door bell rang and what do you know, all of the tree saplings that I had ordered had arrived unexpectedly.
Oh well, best not waste any time. I had postponed cutting down the remaining part of the tree I chopped down before, plus cutting the bushes around it as I was planning to plant some of the tree saplings there. Now there were no more excuses, so I chopped down the thick trunk to ground level, and trimmed away lots of bushes, and cleared the ground for planting the saplings.
This was actually pretty good timing cause I could dig the snake corpse just under one of the saplings. 
After I was done, it was almost midday and the hellish heat had started...

Assorted sapling

Now I have added 2 walnut saplings, 3 different types of mikan, and 1 mulberry to my future fruit orchard. Yeay!
Then it was finally time to start with the coop. I was already was behind schedule. Working as long as I could I only managed to put together the base of the frame. Luckily I had learned my lesson and was wearing anti mosquito armor. I even had a netted hood, so the little buggers didn't have a chance.

Yeah it looks terrible. I am an amateur after all.

The bad part was that although I had designed the coop frame to be built entirely of 2x4s, the home center did not carry 24 of them...somehow I thought they did, since it is a really huuuge store. So I had to change the design on the spot to the base being 2x4 and the rest being 1x4.
This is OK, except that the straightness rate of 1x4s is much lower than 2x4, so even if I bought all 1x4s they had, I would still have to live with a couple of bent/twisted ones.
Not wanting to wait, I just went ahead and built it. It is just a chicken coop.

It kinda looks straight if you squint really hard

By Sunday midday I had built the frame up except for the roof bit. After I was done I put some tarp on it to protect it from rain.
Actually the tarp in the picture is the floor bit which is much smaller. The overall tarp covers the whole thing.
And here is what the whole garden looks like, which is a mess. In front is my so called raised bed with tiny leaves coming out, on the right the logs I cut. On the left is my orchard and on the top is my ongoing coop project.
I am thinking about adding a water feature somewhere...

The rogue melons from my compost pile are really growing

Lilac

5 years? Really?

Well, well, once again my complete newbness is showing. So, I decided to have lilacs in both front, side and back of the house, instead of current ugly useless bushes. Looking around a bit, unusually enough, I could not find the seeds or sapling for sale. At the same time I had shopped around for more interesting vegetables abroad and had ordered lots of seeds from U.S. (I was not sure how much of them would make it through customs but I hoped at least some of them would. Turned out they had to destroy almost half of them. The corn, melon and watermelons I was so hoping for all got thrown out by customs. At least I got the beets and cauliflower and the other stuff.)
That was a long parenthesis so lets get back to topic... Anyway, I started looking abroad for lilac seeds, as saplings cannot be imported cause they are in soil. And wow, I found a Chinese guy (cause he was in China) selling them and ordered right away. After a loooong wait the seeds came yesterday and I almost just planted them in nursery pots...but something made me feel I should check it online (Maybe I am learning after all my failures that not every plant needs to be treated the same way).
I checked online and it looks like just getting the seeds to germinate is pretty tough work. Apparently the seeds only germinate after a month or so of cold weather, so they need to live in the fridge before I can even expect anything to happen...
And after they actually do germinate, one should consider himself lucky to get flowers after 4 years or five.... Really?
Oh well, I guess I should get to work now so that I can grow them indoors during winter.
I have almost 100 seeds so I can experiment a bit with different methods I assume...

On another note, the weather report says this weekend will not be rainy so I have decided to build the coop this weekend. Right now I am making the material list.

Buds

My dump pile

I think I must be doing something wrong with my compost heap in the corner of the garden, because yesterday when after half a week of almost constant rain the weather cleared and I went out to check the garden, I saw that all the melon seeds I had thrown away had germinated and lots of tiny tiny melon leaves had popped up from the top of the compost pile. I dug a little under the compost and it sure was hot and cozy, plus there was nothing recognizable in there so I guess all the crap I throw away in the compost must have decomposed. Except for the seeds that are now growing.
I decided to give them a chance, even though it is out of season. Maybe I will learn something. It means I won't be turning the compost pile for a while... 

In other bud news, my carrots are not up yet as expected. I heard they are late to germinate. But the salads and baby leafs are up now, and so are all the flower seeds I spread out in the backyard.

My dump pile. No wait, my bed for salads

Note how similar to my compost heap my so called raised bed is. Oh well, I am a newbie, and so is the bed. It was a badly maintained lawn with tiny bamboo sticking out everywhere, so I hope it will start looking better and better for every season.

Coop design and other things

I spent most of my weekend designing the coop in detail. I used a new app on my mobile which surprised me as I didn't think you could do advanced 3d designs in real time this easily on mobile.

Also, pushed by my gal, I planted some flowers in the backyard, and some salads and carrots in the first raised bed I prepared. The seeds are already coming up 💚

I also took a branch from a pomegranate tree nearby which had very delicious looking fruits, and set it in some rooting hormone. Hopefully I will get a clone of that tree to plant in my garden soon.

Here molimolimoli...

And based on my suspicions that moles are digging around below my garden (moles are a sign that there are lots of grubs living in the ground, which is quite true in my case, and lets not forget all the grub-eating lizards running around in the garden), I set a mole trap (it doesn't exactly trap but kill) 2 days ago but since then there has been constant rain, and I read moles don't come out much while it is raining. And so the trap is just sitting there...

That is not a tennis court inside, just a software glitch

Back to the coop design, after a bit of back and forth, and finding out our home center doesn't sell 2x4 longer than 180 cm, and seeing how I would have to add lots of extra joints and supports to have a 240 cm long coop, I decided to make the coop 190 cm long (182 plus 2 times 4 added by the end pieces of the frame) and instead of 6 chickens go with 5.

We are not looking to sell eggs, and for our own consumption 5 hens should be plenty anyway.
I did make the coop design a little wider though (120 cm), so it is actually just big enough for 6 birds. But I figured the recommended figures are minimum, so while having 6 chicks would be just safe, 5 birds would be living in the same area much more comfortably.
Whatever, let's go with 5 and see what happens...if it seems too roomy, I will add one more chick.

I realized how long time designing coop takes. Maybe because I, being the moron I am, do it on my smartphone. Or maybe it is so fun for me that I subconsciously prolong the process. I add some bits, move some other bits around, go out and measure in the garden, and change the design a bit again and repeat... The design kind of grows by itself. My goal is to make a design that I feel happy with, then make a list of material based on it and build the whole thing in a weekend. I need 1 day for buying/cutting/assembling, and 1 day for painting, and both days should be rain-free. Looking at the weather forecast we will have at least 10 days more or less constant rain, so I have lots of time to make a real good design. So far the basic frame is good. Now I have to add window/ventilation, walls, lids, roosts and poop board.

A little explanation. The coop will be connected to the fenced run on its south side and its west side, so I can have windows and doors and openings on those sides without fear of chickens running away. On the coop's east side I have two nests which will have a lid with lock for collecting eggs and cleaning. I will have a tiny hole just below the roof, and two more holes in the nests for ventilation that can be covered if needed. On south side, there is a big door for cleaning. That is pretty much the only place I could have the door. On the north side it would be too crowded/uncomfortable what with the drop and all that. I figured if I got rid of a couple of the spruces (yeah I know, it keeps changing), I would have enough space to have the door open wide and access the inside. The door hinges on left.
Next to the door there should be a window. It is a good place for window and the ventilation and light it gives because I will have the roosts (2 roosts north to south) just above the window on either side of it, and hence the poop board will go just below the window. The window would be kept open all the time unless it is cold in the winter.
I am still thinking about maybe some way to let more light in, like a plastic/glass window up-high.
The roosts are about 60 cm above the coop floor, and 30 cm below them will be a poop board which will double as a stepping level. It will have enough width to cover area under the roosts, plus 2x15 cm extra for when the chicks poop with their butts facing out (tihi). The poop board will be mounted on horizontal bars along the north and south walls. The bars are extended so that for cleaning, the board can be removed through the door after sliding it along the bars all the way to front of the door.
Under the poop board will be the entrance for the birds, led to by the ramp from ground. Under the floor is a 60 cm high run. The run should be netted on east and north side only as the other sides connect to the bigger, fenced run part.
Feeder and water should be either mounted on the door, or placed on the floor somewhere on the right half of the coop. Not decided yet.
And the west side should have a couple of windows or something, again, no details decided yet.
The roof is sloped from the middle, although it will be more difficult to build, it will give more balance plus the run-off water/snow will be divided.
That is it for now... after I am done with the coop design, I shall move on to the fence and door parts of the run. The idea is that the run is limited by a fence on its west side, and a fence and a door on its east side where I can get in to clean up etc. That door will be on the left side of the coop's nest basically and open outwards, so I will open that door, get in, open the coop door and get to work.
Height of the fence should be 182 (cause that is the longest board I can buy)
I wonder if that is tall enough to stop chicks... I have read about chicks flying pretty high when really motivated 😆

Coop footprint

So I went out in the morning with a couple of boards to verify my coop design would actually fit in the corner. The design is based on "Plan C" which I earlier wrote about. Here is a modified and updated drawing of it after some additional thinking.

Plan D - from space

The kiwi will be removed (shown with red cross over it), the smaller part of the run would eventually be bigger if I make its wall along the alternative purple line instead of the orange line.
There would be a door to go into the big run (huh huh) and clean up the coop. The nest boxes would be facing north east where the big bush currently is. The coop itself would be a bit more elongate (over 2 meters long)
It was raining so I had to move quickly and placed the boards along where I had in mind. Here are some pictures of the kind of foot print I made with a couple of board. It seems to fit.

Overview.. I guess

The above picture is taken from north east side. The board closest to the camera is where the door would be. Due to rain I didn't have time to make the right length boards and boards where the short sides of the coop would be, so please imagine that part (or make.believe)

close up of big run

 You also have to imagine the big run's wall (the wall without door) as shown above.

the coop itself

Above shows the coop footprint. The long sides are 2 meters or more (The boards are 2 meter exactly), with the "more" shown by the gap between the right board and the board on upper left corner of the picture (which is the wall of the small run).

A slightly different angle

That gap is 40 cm, so keeping things as they are boarded (!), the coop would be 240x120 cm=2.88 sqm which is well above the need of 6 chickens. If my calculations are correct, the run (sum of the small run, the big run and the underside run of the coop) amounts to 5.6 sqm, again just above the need of 6 birds. This calculation is based on the small run having its wall along the orange line (i.e. the small version of the small run)

The small run, next to the drop

So, at least this shape and size and position seem to satisfy the requirements, and it lets me use the fence already in place as part of the run wall. Now I have to make a proper design of it.

Corner situation

The corner of garden

OK, so the so called pros came and looked at the corner with the drop where I wanted to put a retaining wall or something. They looked very puzzled and started sucking air through their teeth and I knew they had started the long process of expressing this was something they had no idea how to fix.
Usually this traditional Japanese process starts with tiny signals and escalates gradually. It takes up to 15 minutes with bigger and bigger signs of agony and suffering until you feel sorry for the guy in pain and release him by saying "It's OK, you can go now. Thanks anyway."
However this time there were too many mosquitoes present who were already biting vigorously on the two pro guys (but not on me as I had sprayed myself with deterrent), so the guys' response was more normal human paced.
After a very short discussion between themselves, they told me honestly that this was above their league and I should ask some higher level pros (what they said was "the people who make roads and such") to come and pour some concrete there or something. They also said it would probably be very expensive.
So I decided I would just leave it be. I also briefly though about asking the town hall for support to prevent landslide but the corner is situated in a way that I think they probably won't give a crap.
What I did was to hammer down a couple of long bamboos as posts just on the edge of the drop (not visible in the picture above as the posts are just to the left of where the picture was taken), and filled the gap with branches and soil. It looks nicer now, and if I get some growth there and the soil settles maybe it will behave. I just let it become a mini jungle.   
By the way, the tree I discovered very recently is in the middle of the picture. After I got rid of the weed that had suffocated it, it seems to gain new life. It is a ginkgo tree, with leaves same shape as Tokyo prefecture symbol. This guy can eventually grow up to become a giant, so I better look up.

Kiwi destiny

NOT from THE MAP

OK, I am still very much a beginner which means that most of the time I have no idea what I am doing. For example the kiwi sapling. When I bought it we had just moved into the mold-house with a small backyard. The backyard soil was not really soil, i.e. there was no life in it, pretty much just sand, but I didn't know that of course, and thought that as long as there is dirt things should grow. I planted lots of things all of which of course died almost instantly. As result I think I left the backyard with much more organic matter and life going on in it than I started with.
The kiwi sapling somehow was the only thing surviving the backyard, maybe feeding a bit on the misery of the other plants and vegetables. It didn't really grow that much. Or at all.
A couple of months before moving to our new house, I transplanted it into a huge pot and left it there...figuring that if it doesn't die I might think about bringing it along. But not really hoping that much. On the last day before moving, I noticed the pot was completely overrun by ants, and kind of decided to throw it away.
The moving guys convinced me to bring it though. And I transplanted it for the third time in the garden when we arrived. What I failed to do was to check what kind of soil kiwi trees need, and also general info about kiwi. I know I know I should have checked it before buying it. I have changed that now, I read up on new plants before going out and buying. And I don't buy trees on a whim like I did the kiwi. "Oh, they sell kiwi trees. Sure would be nice to have my own kiwi fruits in a couple of years."
The spot in the corner where I planted the kiwi is very much clay soil. The opposite of what kiwi needs. I also found out today that kiwi does not give fruits that easily, and not at all if you only have 1 tree. Hahaha.
Let me quote:
"Few crops are more challenging to pollinate than kiwi. Here’s the reason. For high fruit quality a large number of pollen grains per flower (> 3000) are required. Nectar production in kiwi flowers is generally poor, resulting in low attractiveness to honeybees. Furthermore, kiwi plants are “dioecious” meaning that male and female viable reproductive structures are on separate plants. The only way to set fruit is through cross-pollination. The proportion of non-fruit bearing, and thus “unreproductive” male plants in the orchard is generally limited, e.g. often 1 male plant to 5-8 females is advised. This limits availability of pollen."

Well, I can say I am still an idiot when it comes to horticulture, and have lots to learn, and leave it at that. Let's hope it is true.

Nevertheless, I shall transplant the poor bastard one last time. This time the goal is to get it out of the way, and also not to kill it/throw it away. It has proven itself to be a bit of a survivor.
It can be seen right in the center of the picture above. If I remove it, then I have a little more options when it comes to coop placement.

Cooperation

One part of my plans is adding a chicken coop in the farthest south-west corner. That corner is not much use for anything else, due to its shape and placement, plus it is as far away from the neighbors I can get, so chickens will bother them the least there.
But but, having thought about several different coop designs in the last couple of weeks, it seems more difficult than I anticipated.

Cut and zoomed from THE MAP

The corner area has three relatively young spruce trees along the high fence on south, and a pine tree for some reason in the middle of it, with my stupid kiwi sapling (transplanted for the 3rd time thanks to our moving to a new home, poor thing it is a wonder it is not dead) also in the middle of things, and a big nice bush of some sort in it. And then there are two big old tree trunks, protecting the drop, and I discovered another tree on the west edge which was being out-competed by weeds, which I cut the weeds around, and it seems to be recovering. Hopefully it will help stabilize the ground an a few years. All the above are very natural and green and shit but I cannot keep them all if I want to put a coop and a run there.

First I thought I should have a coop placed in the corner, with the rest of the area being a big open run.

Wide open

But it is probably not a good idea, as that area is not properly fenced (due to "the drop", it only has netting separating it from the neighboring land), it is also not protected with a roof or anything. So predators and birds probably will get to the chickens.
My revised option was to have that area as a big open run, but only on weekends. I would make a smaller more permanent run with proper fencing within that area attached with coop.
So, rotating and moving my imaginary coop around the area, I came up with this plan, which only requires cutting down 2 spruces, but saves the rest including the kiwi and the unknown bush which I think the chickens would appreciate both for its shade and for the way it attracts insects.

Half open

This is pretty good. The combined coop and run is big enough for up to 6 birds, it provides good shelter and access to nature etc etc. But there are a couple of issues...
Placing the coop there is a waste of good stable fence behind it. But that is not a huge problem. The problem is that the ground in that area is pretty much level to the right of the pine, but it slopes down quite a bit to the left of the pine, and the slope comes round and also includes the bottom (north) part of the bush.

If anything I am starting to get better at drawing with mouse

So, it means the elevated coop with run attached to it has to be built to be placed on uneven surface. Perhaps by having longer legs on the bush side or sumpting. But the ground north of the slope and north of the bush and the netting is not exactly stable... meaning it may slide down someday maybe due to big rain, earthquake or something of that nature, and whatever is built on it would also slide down... such a slide would probably tear the coop apart if it is build in one piece.
Back to the drawing table.

One thing I can do is to separate coop and run so that their structures are not attached. Also I want to take advantage of the southern fence as part of the run. Doing that means I can probably keep most of the trees. How about I get rid of the unknown bush only, and replace it with a coop?

This is where I am now

Maybe I will come up with more issues that makes this plan useless too. But for now this is where I am. I will be measuring more and check the levelness and hopefully this will be the final plan.
What I like about this one is that it excludes the drop, gets around the slope problem, keeps the trees, plus if designed correctly it will allow access to nest boxes from outside

Tractor

So, this weekend as part of my preparing the land I spend half of the day digging in the clay ground with a hoe, and mixing in all organic matter I could get my hands on, to cover it when I was done, so that the soil would become more...plantable.
After having dug about four meter long bed size, I was completely finished, and looking around, in comparison I had not covered any major area yet. Taking a break from the killer sun I went to the overflowing shed to see what other useful tools is buried among the things that I inherited from the previous owner.
The shed is so full I have not yet been able to sort out its contents. I more or less accidentally discover what is in it. For example the first week I bought sandpaper only to find an old sanding machine in the shed the same afternoon.
Anyway, I had spotted a small machine (or part of it that was not buried) that looked like a tiny lawnmower but I didn't bother looking closer as I am not interested in maintaining a lawn (I have also seen other lawn-related things in the shed). For some reason I suddenly got a feeling that it may after all not be a mower so I dug around it and pulled it out and saw that it in fact was a light tractor...
What perfect timing, I was completely spent after having dug with a hoe so I really needed a tractor. There was no gas in it though so searching a bit more in the shed I found a small gas container with some in it. I set everything up and attempted to start the tractor on the garden.
....and of course it failed to start. I kept pulling on the starter rope over and over again for maybe 15 minutes, eventually feeling that I may have finished digging the whole garden by now if I had spent the same amount of energy using the hoe.
Just when I was considering giving up due to the burning pain in my arm having pulled the rope for a constant 15 minutes and swearing, the motor started as if the whole thing had been a practical joke.
I ran the tractor/tiller back and forth for a while but it was too light. It kept jumping up and down and I had too really push it to even penetrate the soil a little bit.
Finally both me and the tractor ran out of gas and I returned it to the shed to rest. I think I will prepare the beds by hand and hoe.
Next weekend hopefully some seeds I ordered will arrive and I can do some planting.