Tonight was Round Two. Arriving home from a shopping trip to Dallas, I went into the chicken coop to turn on the heat lamp to keep the keats warm overnight and there was a big old long chicken snake stretched out on the chicken roost. Of course, by the time I turned on the lamp and saw him or her, I was already past the snake and it was between me and the door, so I had to go back past the snake to exit the chicken coop. (sigh) Several "hysterical woman" phone calls later, two sets of neighbors arrived, gloves and guns in hand. (We have the world's most wonderful friends and neighbors.) One dragged that ugly old snake out of the chicken house, the other shot it, and peace and calm reigned again. I did call DH at work to tell him that his "snakeproof" chicken coop, as he has repeatedly described it since building it--most recently two days ago--is NOT snakeproof. (I wish it was.) I believe we will spend his days off attempting to do some more snakeproofing. The good news is that, for the second time in a week, a snake got into the building but not into the bird brooder cage, which DS apparently did an excellent job of snakeproofing. And, I hate to say that for fear I will jinx us and the next snake we see will be inside the cage eating keats. And, by the way, fresh, home-grown tomatoes are an excellent "thank you" to give a neighbor who comes running to rescue your keats from a big ol' bad ol' snake. I gave one neighbor a bagful and promised one to bring one to the other neighbor tomorrow after I pick tomatoes. Only six more weeks until the keats are theorectically large enough that a snake cannot crush them and eat them. Of course, it still will be a battle with the other predators, but the guineas usually can fight that battle on their own pretty well. Ada, my cousin's cat was picked up and carried away by a red-tailed hawk about 25 or 26 years ago....and then the hawk dropped the cat into a pasture and it made its own way home, a little scratched up and bloodied, but it survived. However, from what I recall, that cat pretty much stayed inside the house after that....and that cousin had a big snake problem as well, but with western diamondback rattlers.....I'd rather have the chicken snakes. Dawn P.S. If the neighbors hadn't come to our rescue, I guess Kristine and I would have shot it, but we would not have dragged it out of the chicken coop first, because we weren't going to touch it....and we didn't really want to blow a hole in the wall.

Like I said Mitchell. Just let me know when you want to come up and I'll be your guide. I know a place in Indiana near Champaign for Fox Snakes and Smooth Greens. Dave

Great post. I tried this method this past weekend. Relative to the lawn mower method of chopping up large pine bark chunks, I found this method to be cleaner (it doesn't shoot pine chunks out the sides like a mower will), a bit slower than the mower, and produced a lot more fine particles. I have a high speed Toro leaf blower/mulcher with a metal impeller. A large percentage of the particles coming out felt like fine compost, and a large number of chunks went through looking unscathed, so I didn't get the mix of particle sizes that I was hoping for. I suppose if I had a 1/8" screen, I could have sifted out some of the fine stuff. As it was, I got about 3 gallons of material, and made a side batch of 5-1-1 to try with some peppers, but I didn't mix it in with the rest of my 5-1-1.

My husband and I are currently working with architects to design a home that is very similar to what you've described (1.5 stories, 2 bed, 2.5 bath - one tub, one shower). However, in order to accommodate our needs (a study on the first floor, a pantry, etc.) we ended up a little above your stated size preference (1700 square feet). We've been cautioned against building small for some of the reasons mentioned here, but honestly we would pay more for a smaller home. We'd prefer a small place with high-end details to a larger home. In the area where we live there are not older homes this size on the market, although we waited for about ~2 years seeing what would come available. Ultimately, we decided in our area, which has a high percentage of retirees and child-free couples, a smaller house could sell if/when we have to. But more importantly, we didn't want to compromise on living in a house we didn't like trying to anticipate market trends 15-20 years down the line.