The weather here has been highly variable of late, but the general trend is warming. Some days are below freezing and uncomfortable, but some are above freezing and rather pleasant, if a bit muddy.
On one warm day this week, we took the opportunity to work on the "resting" compost pile a bit. It's pretty well broken down, but I figured breaking up and turning the top a bit would encourage the flock to continue to scratch, peck, and help any chunky materials to continue to break down. We'll probably try to do that fairly regularly until we're ready to start sifting and harvesting.
And as far as the big steps...they're LITERALLY some big steps. We needed some stairs to get into our big coop (climbing in there was NOT fun) and happen to have wonderful neighbor who is also a carpenter. He put together the stairs pictured above out of very sturdy PT 2 x 12 lumber. They should last a long time and make cleaning, collecting, and working in the coop a lot easier.
One other big step...or more a milestone, I guess...we just donated our 300th dozen of eggs since our first donation, roughly a week and a half shy of one year ago.
Production is really taking off...we donated 14 dozen eggs on Tuesday afternoon...then 7 more dozen today, Thursday afternoon. We then had 19 more eggs in the big coop in the evening.
A few pictures of the flock enjoying some compost time:
