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It was down to 21 degrees here last night so I hear you on the Zone issues. Hasn’t been that cold here even in the dead of winter for years. Even so, it gets up to the 50’s during the day and we try to roll back the cover’s if only for half a day.

I was worried about one of my neighbors too. He is an older man who likes to bully everyone, I suppose, because he is bored. He hasn’t said a word about it (thank goodness) and we’ve had the flock for about 5 months.

We are in a “restricted” neighborhood and the house behind us (not under covenant) came up for sale. We bought it for rental property and part of the agreement is we get to use the backyard for gardening and coop. It was the only way to one up the homeowners association.

City ordinance does limit our flock size but as long as nobody complains we are good to go. I built an attractive coop and we keep everything clean to avoid odor. We even fenced off a paddock area for free ranging but the girls need supervision. They are bad to jump the fence into the garden area when no one is looking. We decided against a rooster because of noise. Usually get an egg a day per chicken so we had plenty available for Thanksgiving recipes.

Luckily my husband is very proactive in the garden and we work as a team. I generally keep up with the weather and he helps me when a cold snap requires extra manpower.

This is only our second winter garden and we didn’t expect such cold weather so early on. We had to order the row covers online and they got here the day before the first freeze. The plastic was when we went into panic mode and it was all that was available quick and economically.

So far so good. No loss of any plants except a couple of ferns we were trying to save. We are going to cook a big pot of greens tonight and make cornbread. Good eat’n.

Having trouble posting pics but will try one of the coop.

< img src=”http://rs892.pbsrc.com/albums/ac128/jordansjourney/Mobile%20Uploads/2013-09-30_10-24-24_416_zps3a43db36.jpg~320x480"; >

If we ever do get some chickens we had been thinking about those portable pens/house that you can just roll around to fresh ground every so often, so that you don’t get bare patches. anywhere, and the soil nutrition is helped out routinely too.LOL

Thanks for posting the pic of your coop. It is the cutest one I have ever seen!