Tea at Trianon: How to Build a Backyard Chicken Coop

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, August 15, 2022

How to Build a Backyard Chicken Coop

From Architectural Digest:

Before building a backyard chicken coop, remember it can take up a good portion of a yard. “The overall size of your coop is dependent on how many chickens you will be housing; the rule of thumb for the run is 10 feet per chicken,” Sharp says. “This can be slightly smaller if you have free-ranging chickens, and are letting them out to forage in your garden during the day.”
Sustainability expert Shelbi Orme, known as Shelbizleee to her 300,000+ YouTube subscribers, and based in San Antonio, Texas, was excited to have a backyard chicken coop, even though it did eat into her gardening space. “I think maybe people don’t realize that it’s going to take up space where you might want to be growing other things,” Orme says. The number of chickens you hope to raise will greatly affect every detail of your backyard chicken coop.
“Start with a manageable number of chickens,” says Douglas Friedman, a photographer based in Marfa, Texas, who raised his chickens from baby chicks, and underestimated how much space he’d need. When he started the coop, he thought, “Oh, I’ll start with 30 chicks.” However, he soon realized that’s a lot of chickens. “We actually had to expand the size of the coop and make it bigger to accommodate them,” he says. “I really messed it up. We probably would have been fine with like half as many birds.” Friedman’s coop (documented on Instagram @thebestlittlehenhouseintexas) was restored from a derelict coop on his neighbor’s property, so the excess of chickens meant expanding the existing structure. (Read more.)