A couple of weeks ago I learned that if a tree falls in the middle of the night at Spirit Hill, no one hears it.
Well, the chickens must have, since it fell on top of their house, but they’re still not talking about it. Who knows, maybe they are heavy sleepers and they slept through the whole slam. It’s possible I guess. The chicken coop itelf wasn’t actually damaged except that the ornamental rooster on the roof took a beating.
Imagine my surprise when I went to feed the chickens at 6 A.M. and saw that the tree by the road, the tree that the night before had been vertical was now horizontal. I had to climb over branches to make my way over the busted fence to the coop. There was tree everywhere. The gate to the coop and the fence was smashified.
Mayhem.
Here’s the good part of the story: Jake Moore. Our intrepid Julie Wonder Women—she’s the one who takes on projects such as redo the pool and makes sure there are marshmallows and graham crackers and chocolate bars for your s’mores—found out that Jake, the man who had fixed our firepit one time, also had a long history with chickens and had great ideas how he could rebuild the fence, making the area more of a wonderland for the girls.
What he didn’t know was the week he was scheduled to work would be hot. As in 105 degrees hot.
I’m telling you, that guy never stopped moving. I don’t know how he did it, but in a matter of days, the chickens had much larger stomping grounds—they now own the compost pile!—and we have a new gate that opens easily as a whisper, a vast improvement over the old gate that was hurting even before it got smashed by the tree.
My favorite thing that Jake did was that he curled the ends of the metal wire at the gate’s entrance to make it look pretty. Mind you, he did this under a sun that had driven me inside hours earlier. He also took the latch from the old gate and used it on the new one in a tribute to what was.
Here at Spirit Hill, we love our chickens, and we love Jake.
If you live in the area and need a handyman, Jake’s your guy. Just ask the chickens.
Jake Moore
Santa Rosa
707-571-9762