Aah, the wonderful wishful thinking that the coop might be done. It is determined to be that never ending project, no matter how hard I try. The roofs on the nest boxes did indeed stop the hens from roosting on the edges by now letting them all bunch up together on top of the roofs. They are very happy with this as this used to be the very area that they bunched up together before I put the nest boxes in. So now they are in the same spot just higher. I'm hoping that they will have the desire for some privacy and darkness when they actually start to lay and will indeed use the boxes. Otherwise we will have to block off the top because that area would not be conducive to eggs staying whole.

And of course the water solution didn't work either. I think I'll just have to face the reality of the situation and buy a hanging waterer and be done with it.

We finished tying up the tomatoes out front today, which is good because it is supposed to be getting a little gusty in the next day or so and the plants are getting big enough now to be affected by such things. M had built a really nice cedar trellis for the plants and even fashioned some bobbins so we could let out more twine as the plants grow, but they were a little unwieldy. So we just got some clothes pins, hooked them up, wound the twine and went.

We pulled about five pounds of beautiful Yukon Gold potatoes out of the ground yesterday, roasted some of them up and they were great, really good texture. We are also harvesting lettuce like crazy, the older heads are getting ready to bolt, so we need to get it picked and washed in the next couple days or we'll be feeding it to the hens.

We have a very vigorous vine growing out of the first compost pile and I'm not sure what it is yet. It looks like it will probably be some sort of summer squash but luckily it doesn't look like zucchini. It is rather light green in colour, and is so small at this point that I could even hope that it might be some sort of melon.