Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [82]
If the coop project is to go well, it will all come down to Mills. I am a loyal laborer, and will pitch in full bore, but even with proper guidance I tend to run off the rails. Part of it is a patience issue. Once I get started, I want to finish. This leads to rushing and improper material usage, to say nothing of improper application of hardware—say, trying to drive finish nails with a plumb bob. And even when I do slow down and read the directions, things have a way of going wrong. Remember that electric fence I hooked up for the pigpen? I did the whole thing exactly right—spaced and sank three grounding rods instead of settling for just one, linked them together, and clamped (rather than just wrapping) the wire as indicated…a month passed before I went to open the shed door and discovered that I had run the ground wire in such a way that the door couldn’t slide on its rails without cutting the wire in two. If life was a state fair, I’d have a giant shoe box full of green ribbons embossed with the word PARTICIPANT.
I want the chicken coop mounted on skids, as we intend to move our chickens around. Also, because it does not sit on a foundation, it is not viewed as a permanent structure and will therefore not be taxed as such, or so I believe until the assessor tells me otherwise and I pony up. Since the skids will be in direct contact with the ground, I tell Mills they need to be made of treated lumber. He grins. “Come with me!” Dressed in his sleeveless T-shirt, ball cap, white athletic socks, and Crocs, he leads us up a trail into the pine trees off the side of the yard, past several Sanford and Son piles, and then, with the civilized flourish of a sommelier pulling back the velvet curtain shrouding a particularly pricey corner of the wine cellar, he strips back a tarp to reveal a stack of beautiful green-treated six-by-six timbers that will be perfect for the job. We lug them back to the yard, saw the ends off at an angle, and begin framing up the floor.
I try to involve Amy wherever I can—when we trim the ends of the skids, I show her how to use a carpenter square to draw a pencil line at the proper angle, and in between, how to stow the pencil behind her ear. Because the skids have to be the same length and we have four six-by-sixes to choose from, I give her the tape measure and let her find the two longest, then determine how much we have to cut from the longer of those two to make them the same length. This leads to a discussion of inches and feet and how when you write measurements on a scrap of board, inches are denoted with a double hatch and feet with a single. When Mr. Miller fires up the saw, we put on our earmuffs and afterward discuss the importance of hearing protection. When we make a mistake, I show her how to pull a nail, and I show her how to extend the reach of the hammer claw by putting a shim beneath the head. Once we get going on the deck, it is mostly a matter of driving straight nails into flat boards, so she can really go to town. She whales away at a steady pace, bending a nail now and then but just as quickly pulling it and grabbing another from the plastic Folger’s can. To make it easier to hit the underlying frame I show her how to use a chalk line, and of course she loves this—snapping the taut string with a cottony twang and watching the elongated cloud of purple chalk dust float away and dissipate on the breeze, then reeling the line in to recoat it with chalk, just like a fishing reel with no pole.
We work into the afternoon. I try to keep teaching without being overbearing. I let her measure and mark the boards to be cut. I give her little problems, like, if we need one board sixteen inches long and another board two feet long, can we cut them both from this one long board? I find