Fall 2021 One Room Challenge - Week 3: Side Yard Progress

It’s already Week 3 of the One Room Challenge and after Week 1 and Week 2 we’re making great progress on our side yard!

As with our 2020 Fall One Room Challenge, we enlisted help from my brother-in-law Dave, owner of Ground Control, an Orillia and area landscape maintenance company. We hired Dave to install our fence, level the ground from where our trees were removed and build our perennial gardens. This would allow Grant to focus on building our chicken coop and me the landscaping - seeding the lawn and planting all of our trees, shrubs and perennials.

Fence

We purchased all of the fence panels second hand - a lucky Kijiji find - but all the posts, caps and brackets were new. Not all of the panels were the same length and we bought just enough to run the full length of the side yard. Dave dug all of the post holes by hand and figured out all of the spacing with ease, including the double wide gate in the middle.

The fence at the back of the property was still in really great shape but was overgrown with weeds and tree seedlings. Grant cleaned everything up to make way for some white cedars that will eventually grow up to be a large cedar hedge, in keeping with the cedar hedges on both adjoining neighbour’s properties. The cedars will also soften the hard edges of the fence and give some much needed greenery year round.

Grant cleaning up the back fence row and digging holes for the cedars

Completed fence, crabapple trees planted

Chicken Coop

So our original idea was to build a brand new coop designed by Boxwood Avenue. We started framing the coop and started thinking about how to best insulate for our sometimes -20 to -30 degrees Celsius winter temperatures. We quickly realized that insulating this tiny coop was going to be really tough and decided to go in a different direction thanks to my brother, and contractor/avid ice fisherman Paul. Paul had built a pretty fancy and completely insulated fish hut years ago which has been sitting in the barn on our family farm. He traded in this hut for a portable pop-up hut and hasn’t looked back so we thought we would give this option a try.

Part of the insulation inside the hut had been damaged by some barn critters (raccoons) so we had to remove the old panels and replace with new ones.

Our ice hut turned chicken coop with a fresh coat of white paint

Gardens

Now that the fence and coop were in place we wanted to move quickly on the gardens. We had about 15 yards of soil (1/2 triple mix & 1/2 topsoil) delivered by Davey Gravel to build out the gardens as well as top up the lawn. Dave scraped the top layer of weedy sod from where the gardens would go just outside of the fence, even with the existing gardens, and started to layer on the triple mix.

Now that the hard part (fence/gardens) is done we can focus on the fun and easier jobs like planting and finishing the coop. While we still have a lot to do we can see the end in sight and are coming up on a few days of sunshine - just in time for fall bulb planting. Stay tuned for more updates here and on Insta for this project and please also visit the One Room Challenge site where you can follow the process of other guest participants and featured designers.

Carley