Walls in France: It's official...we're nuts!

Some people thought we were crazy to move to France. We thought the same thing a few times, but decided it was definitely a challenge and risky, but not crazy. But now, we have gone over the edge...

During the quaint old-timey fete that I wrote about in a previous blog, we bought chickens. Not the roasted kind that you can get at Harris Teeter, but the live, squawking, egg-laying kind! We bought two and our friends, Beatrice and Jean Paul Tossens, also bought two with the plan that all four foul would live chez Wall.

Since we were not planning on buying chickens (remember, we're nutso!), we put the chickens in a hastily-thrown-together temporary shelter for the night. The next day, Bucky the Builder and I set out to procure supplies to make a proper chicken coop (or poulailler en francais) for our new family members! We were hoping to strike gold at Castorama since we had had such luck there with our petite maison project, but no cigar. We went to another place and then another and finally found the entire kit and kaboodle for the chicken coop at Botanic. We still needed a few other items for the fencing to go around the coop so we stopped at Mr. Bricolage and bought lumber and chicken wire (that was surprisingly expensive!).

Once we got home, the heavens opened up and it began to pour. We were fretting about the poor birds in their interim abode so we decided to start building in the rain. (I told you were were cuckoo!!) We put up the fencing and got soaked so we took shelter in the garage and worked on the coop. A number of hours and many swear words later, it was finished! We moved the ladies into their new home, and waited for them to do their thing. Luckily, we had lots of free advice from Beatrice's mom (who was a farmer in a previous life) and we quickly learned how to care for our new animals. We were thrilled to find our first eggs and look forward to many omelettes made with the help of our chickens. Definitely rewarding, but also a bit demented!