Getting ready to roost

Chickens are coming!  We have a winter before they arrive, but today, on a warm mid-autumn holiday, we got to work putting up a stockade fence.

Mel, a great gardener from the big house helped, and our neighbor Steve came over to see what was going on.

Our backlot is overgrown with roots aplenty, and not far underground lies ledge.  By day’s end, the post hole digger was dented and bent.  But six sections of fence went up.  Privacy for the hens, and for us too.

The City of South Portland will allow six hens – no Roosters – per household.  Muscovy Ducks would be welcome; they love to eat flies, maggots, mosquitos, mosquito larva, slugs, bugs of all sorts, black widow spiders, the brown fiddleback spider and any thing else that creeps and crawls.  They are a boon to any garden.

 If two households pair up, would that allow twelve birds in total – a mixture of chickens and ducks?  Steve had chickens decades ago, and welcomes the idea.  Maybe we have the chickens and he keeps the ducks, and they waddle back and forth, foraging here and there as they go.  Something fun to ponder as the winter winds begin to blow.