The Chicken Coop

I have a great family friend, John Pratt, who has been a remarkable resource over the last year. My family has know the Pratt family since I was in the first grade with their daughter, Caroline in Georgia. Remarkably, the Pratt family is a mirror image of my family: an older boy, a middle girl, and a younger boy, all of us the same ages. We all grew up together and even now manage to see each other every so-often, mainly on Martha's Vineyard where the Pratt's come to vacation every summer.

John is a  lawyer in Atlanta who offered me pro bono lawyer work when I first started Slip Away. He helped me establish the farm as a LLC, saved a website address for us, organized business matters with my investors, and tightened up my business plan and budgets. His help navigating the confusing business/legal world while also providing general enthusiasm and advice was a tremendous gift in itself.

And then he offered an even bigger gift. In addition to being a lawyer, John is also a skilled carpenter. He builds beautiful things, and decided he wanted to build Slip Away Farm a chicken coop. He decided to use his one-week vacation in August on Martha's Vineyard as the time to build it. Collins was able to help him, and together they planned and began the building. They put it together it in pieces on the Vineyard, which we then loaded on to a dump truck and brought over to assemble on Chappy.

John's vacation ended two weeks ago and he headed home, leaving Collins in charge. He and Jason have been working diligently on it, and it is now recognizable as a chicken house. They have some of the shingles up, the four big windows will be going in shortly, along with the nest boxes and the most beautiful door a chicken house has ever seen.

The whole thing is on skids, so we will be able to move it around the farm, relocating the chickens to peck at and fertilize new sections of ground. The house has enough room for roughly 60 chickens, which will provide us with a steady supply of fresh eggs to sell. Can't wait.