Welcome to the House of Noncentz!
We have property beside our house that has been overgrown in blackberry vines for years...that is until I decided to get chickens. I cleared the vines away, not using a power tool but a pair of loppers and moving the vines by hand to one of three piles. I cleared the space, then filled in the space with cement rubble, added 1 1/2" minus rock to level it out, placed my forms on top of the rock, added sand for more leveling and then placed 1.5 yards of concrete in the forms...by wheelbarrow! The first pic is of the slope beside the house that we had to haul everything up to get to the "coop". The second pic is of the cement pad that we just "poured" today...more like dumped! I don't know how long it took us or how many loads there were, but we had three pushing wheelbarrows, two skreeting the concrete and one loading the concrete in the wheelbarrows. I am so glad this part is done. We have 10 chicks that are waiting for the coop to be built: 4 EE's, 5 BLRW (Blue/Black/Splash) and 1 Buttercup. We just hatched (4/1/10) three Buckeye chicks that will need to go in there in a few weeks too