This picture was taken this morning as the sun started coming out. Bracken and I were in the back garden harvesting some chives for breakfast (I was going to skip them today, but Bracken insisted) while Jeff worked on the coop. When I wrote before that we’ve gotten discouraged by how long the building-the-chicken-coop-project is taking…. well, the truth is that we love building and anything that involves working outside in the yard, fixing things up, and getting things done around here. Nothing is more satisfying to us than a day of hard work in the yard, whether it be gardening, building, cleaning up, or even pulling weeds. But we can’t spend all of our time out there. We’ve got bills to pay and our business to run (which we love doing too, the business part that is.) So we’ve been going back and forth between the coop and the business. Well, I should say Jeff has been. I haven’t been helping with the building lately. I’ve been taking care of Bracken, making meals, doing laundry, cleaning the house, taking pictures for Etsy, mailing out packages, writing blog posts… you get the idea. Jeff has been working so hard on the coop and I’m so grateful for all he’s done. He’s still managed to sand new buttons, and woodburn lots of new magnets, buttons, and necklaces.

 Backing up… I took this picture a few days ago of the beams across the top.

 Picture taken this morning through the living room window. Jeff was setting the metal up there to see how it would all fit together (then took it back down to finish the roof structure before attaching them permanently.)

 A beautiful start to the day. Jeff had already been outside working for a long time by that point.

 Getting lighter out.

 Working on the roof.

 Another picture through the living room window.

 Happy-roofin’-dude.

 And… the roof is on!

 Happy the roof is on!

 Being silly and flexing muscles like macho man.

 View from the front.

The roof is on and we’re one step closer!

This picture shows the grape arbor too. Was the grape arbor a “necessary” project when there are so many other things needing to be done? No, not really and yet it felt very necessary the day we put it up and I’m so glad we did. Somehow it gave our spirits a boost when we were feeling overwhelmed and helped us dig into all our other projects.

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We will not be at market this weekend. We wanted to be ready, but realized we need to tie up some loose ends around here first. We have not packed all of our market stuff into our new car yet (and are wondering how we’ll fit it all, though at one point we brought our things to market each week in a much smaller vehicle.) We have work to do on the roof rack and lots of organizing to do, since our market stuff has been packed away all winter. We’re missing our market friends and look forward to being back. We will be, just not quite yet.

Enjoy your weekend, friends.