Strong fences make sane farmers

J already apologized for the lack of recent posts, so I wont do so again, but rest assured, I had good reason. The reason being:

THE CHICKENS ATE MY VEGETABLE SEEDLINGS

No amount of bolding or readily available fonts can accurately convey the appropriate level of horror and despair. I have only just emerged from a fog of sadness and moping to tell you about it.

This happened while J was away in South Africa.  Prior to leaving he built and posted about a new greenhouse we were trying.   For a full two weeks it proudly presided over our backyard, gently heating (or being heated by) the mound of straw and compost we'd piled in there.  Meanwhile, I carefully prepared my seedlings for the long journey from the top of the boiler to the kitchen window, and finally, their first day outside in the greenhouse.

The great day arrived. I stocked the greenhouse with plants and then went off only to come home to find the greenhouse blown over and every plant ripped to shreds.  The plants weren't necessarily eaten- just strewn about among the pots and scattered soil like the day after a chicken kegger.

Greenhouse remains

Anyone that knows me knows that I love plants.  Possible more than people (sorry).  Definitely more than chickens.  I suppose I could have been mad at J and his carpentry skills or the wind or myself for putting ALL of my brassicas out on the first day, but I wasn't.  I was mad at the chickens and everything they did filled me with rage.

And so I made a fence around the coop with a bunch of log/sticks and deer netting.  Luckily the soil had just thawed and it only took about an hour to dig the holes and get everything set up.

The chickens were confused at first, and I felt bad about confining them.  But then I looked at my dying plants and hardened my heart and said "haha suckers, chicken jail for you!"

And then they escaped through a gap I hadn't sealed well and, because they can't really see the fence netting, they then spent the next 20 minutes body slamming themselves against it in an increasing panic as they tried to get back to their coop (but also evaded my assistance).  At least now they seem traumatized enough by the experience to not want to escape anymore.  For the most part they don't seem to care that they're confined, unless they see a human in the yard and decide they want attention (which is always).  Then they gather at the side and do this:




So now instead of the chickens rushing over to the house and trying to trip me every time I open the back door, I'm greeted with a very pitiful chicken cacophony, which is especially grating when trying to have a meal at the picnic table outside.

Unfortunately, the netting we used for the fence is very flimsy and has now started ripping where we part it to enter and exit, resulting in an increasingly elaborate pile of things leaned in front of it to keep the chickens from accidentally wandering out until we can frame a real door.

Its mostly been working.  But then of course the other day I was sitting by the window and saw a cardboard box roll by like a tumbleweed.  I went out to get it, and found that our door-barriers had blown down and the chickens had wandered out.  So what do they do with five minutes of freedom and 4.5 acres at their disposal?

 

And so I lost yet another tray of seedlings.



Triangles versus Semicircles

We spent the last few weeks experimenting with structures. We found that we needed a greenhouse that could also maybe double as a chicken tractor. So we needed to build a light and sturdy frame on which we could put netting or plastic.

We'd made a first attempt at a chicken tractor using some of the leftover wood from the house. Apparently the previous owner delighted in building cabinets out of plywood, and then painting the cabinets, once completed, in thick layers of brown paint. Thus all unwittingly he provided us with building materials for chicken shelters. 

The result was a beast. Parts of the wood were halfway disintegrated with rotted ends that had to be sawed off before they could be worked with. Some of the boards split when they were nailed and had to be shored up with other pieces of wood. And all the wood had many, many nails which we had to pull out. At the end, we had a chicken tractor, but it is heavy, looks like Frankenstein, and can fit maybe four chicken.

The second attempt was using CPVC piping - the plastic water pipes you can get at the hardware store. L saw that the pipes can be flexed into half-circles, and so we got several 8-foot lengths of half-inch CPVC and a few fittings and put them together into a hoop house. Total cost: around $20, with a few hours to saw the piping to size and glue it all together. 

Our Frankenstein chicken tractor in the foreground, and the hoop house we made out of PVC piping in the background (before being covered). 

The hoop house wobbled around somewhat, and one of the pieces of piping kept popping out of the fitting, but it was quite light. We covered it in plastic and positioned it overtop of a pile of chicken manure that we wanted to compost faster, keeping it in place with a few bricks. 

Then disaster struck. The cold came, and the wind blast, and the snow fell. We woke up to find our hoop house at the other end of the property, ripped apart. 

The remains of the hoop house, once we'd found them at the other end of the yard. 

On to attempt number 3. This time, we built in wood. The design came to me in a daydream - I wanted to find a shape that would minimize the amount of building material and cuts to be made, but would also be sturdy and reasonably easy to put together. The answer was to build two equilateral triangles and connect them to form a prism. The wood was 2-by-3 inch studs to form the triangles, with 1-by-3 lumber connecting them to form the longitudinal sides of the prism. All the lumber was sold in eight foot lengths, so we kept that as the length of each side. 

The Prism, attempt number 3 for a greenhouse/chicken tractor. 

To form an equilateral triangle, the ends of each stud had to be cut at a 30-degree angle, which is tricky to do with hand tools. Fortunately, a friend with a table saw helped us out. Total cost: also around $20, surprisingly - those eight-foot studs were only $2.15 apiece at the Home Depot. The carpentry took rather longer than the work for the hoophouse design, though. It feels sturdy, and while it's not light, two people can easily carry it around. 

We just finished putting the plastic on to turn it into a greenhouse. We have freezing rain here tonight, so we'll see if it survives until morning! 

The Prism, standing in glory in a field of ice. 

See what happened:
http://soggybottomhomestead.blogspot.com/2015/04/strong-fences-make-sane-farmers.html