Repurposing

Humans are far from the first animals to use a thing for other than the purpose it originally came to be. Birds at the least have been doing it probably ever since Archaeopteryx first swiped some dinosaur's nest for her own purposes. It's no different today, they just do it to humans!

This first photo as you can see is my nail pouch. It's hanging in my workshop where I usually keep it. A month or so ago I went into the shop to get the pouch so I could use it to work on the chicken tractor I detailed in the previous post only to have Mrs. Wren fly out in my face! She'd done it to me again. Happens every Spring. The homesteading urge comes upon them and they appropriate whatever space looks good to them. I let her be and put my nails in yogurt cups waiting on her to finish up with her reproductive business. She originally laid four eggs, every nest I've seen has always had four eggs, with two hatching. The chicks have since fledged and flown the nest so now I can reclaim my nail pouch, but I thought I'd get a photo first. I wasn't sure what would happen if I took a photo of the chicks so I waited until now.


This second photo is a much newer nest. It is situated inside of the bleach jug that we keep our clothes pins in for the line in the backyard. What makes this one odd is that the jug is directly outside and next to the back door of the house that we go through at least a dozen times a day! Doesn't seem to bother Mrs. Wren in the least. We all know the nest is there and we don't molest her other than taking a photo and allowing the kids to see (but not touch). We all know she's there but she make us jump every time she bursts out of there at a hundred miles an hour whenever we walk up to the backdoor. We use the dryer a lot more than the clothes line so not being able to get to the pins won't be much of a hardship for a while. At least she didn't make me knock over a stack of material on the workbench the way she did the year she put the nest inside of an open bag of ground oyster shell that I keep for the hens. I bent over to get a scoop full, stuck my hand in and she exploded out into my face startling me so that I fell backwards and cleaned half the workbench in the process.

It's like this every Spring. Never know where I'm going to find the nests...

I got sort of a late start this morning for fixing a real breakfast for the family (french toast) but there were still some nice blossoms in the garden. We've received only two inches of rain in over three months so the garden sprinkler has to meet the need. Seems to be doing the job so far as I can tell with the summer squash (C. pepo). I expect to pick the first of them tomorrow evening or the morning of the day after. Fresh summer squash is one of my favorite vegetables.



The Butternut squash (C. moschata) has really begun to hit its stride as well. The vines are vining as they should though they seem to be reluctant to climb the fence I planted them next to so that I have to tie them on. Hopefully the eight inch long tendrils they're putting out will get the idea soon. The hen house litter I tilled into the garden a month or so before planting seems to be doing right by them. So far it appears I'm going to get a good fruit set.


There's more color than just squash blossoms out there. As I mentioned in an earlier post I like to plant marigolds among the vegetables. I could not honestly tell you if they repel noxious insects or not, but they do seem to attract plenty of pollination insects as you can see with the butterfly. He (she?) led me a chase all over the garden trying to get one decent shot. This one still isn't the best but it'll have to do. There are both yellow and orange marigolds out there and they're all going to town putting out the blossoms. I had intended to put some cosmos in as well but didn't get to it. Maybe the Fall garden.


If you recall from the Dun Hagan Wildflowers post I put up a little while ago there was a nice Pinewoods Milkweed (Asclepias humistrata) in the series. This is that same plant now on the verge of opening its seed pods. Some of the others on the property are already open. I never have seen any caterpillars on them so I suspect the Monarch butterfly doesn't find them toothsome, but while the flowers were open there were plenty of other flutter bugs that helped themselves.



With it being later in the season now we're starting to see some new wild flower species showing themselves. This one is the Eastern Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron annuus). Until I start mowing it's a common late spring/early summer wildflower here. My daughters often pick big boquets of the blossoms.







This one as you can see is the Eastern Prickly Pear (Opuntia humifusa) which is unfortunately common on the property and one of my nemesis plants. It's actually a little past their blossoming season here, but I found this one growing under one of my oak trees where it is partially shaded during the day so I suppose it's a bit behind schedule. They're a real chore to elimate out of the yard, orchard and garden but I have to admit for the brief time of the year they're in blossom they are pretty.


Here's another well adapted sand-ridge species, the Sensitive Briar (Mimosa quadrivalvis). I don't find very many pink flowers around here but this is one of the few. Kids love the things because the leaves really do fold up if you stroke them with your finger. The plant is not without its defenses though as the stems are covered in fine thorns so care must be used when weed pulling.






This one has always puzzled me. It is Spiderwort which if I have identified it properly is Tradescantia ohiensis. There are a couple of species that look very similar to me and there is a degree of variability in the plants themselves, but I believe this one is correct. What puzzles me about the plant is that it grows here at all. Most places were you find it thriving are lower and wetter than here at Dun Hagan which is best characterized as droughty sand. Still, there it is in the pasture, yard, and garden. Not a lot of it and it doesn't make tall standing clumps the way it's often seen elsewhere. Most of the time it stays fairly low to the ground in almost a running fashion and puts out only a few blossoms at a time. If it should happen to be near to something that I irrigate regularly it behaves more like it does in lower places. It can be a nuisiance in areas that it likes, but here it makes a striking blue flower that really stands out when I come upon it.

The next four are unknown to me so perhaps one of you readers can turn me onto what their names are. This one here is past its blossoming prime. The odd cob-shaped blossoms are all milky white when they first open. These are about two days past their best, but you can see the little one in the bottom that is closer to their usual color.




This one tends to sparse running clumps. You have to bend over to really see how pretty the blossoms are. The plants don't usually grow more than six inches tall here.









This one is somewhat annoying in that at one time I did know what it was because I looked it up, but lately I can't recall anything about what it's called. It's a striking plant though. They'll stand a foot to eighteen inches high and you can see those bright orange blossoms for quite a ways. The butterflys really like them as well. I just missed getting a shot of this blossom when it had two of these flutter bugs on it. I've seen as many as four on at one time before.






This final one never occurs in terribly great numbers here, but it stands out where it does because it is so tall. They're just getting started good here and will blossom across the summer. My eldest daughter likes to ride the mower with me and she is always reminding me "don't run over the flowers, daddy!" My mowing often looks pretty ragged out there in the pasture and it's largely because of these blossoms as I mow around them to keep the child happy.







Because they are so tall I could not get the base of the plant in the same photo as the blossoms while retaining any close up detail so here it is in this one.


The vegetable garden is coming along well. The first blossoms on the okra should open in another week or so and the sweet potatos are starting to run. Still haven't gotten it mulched in yet so I spent a fair part of today hoeing and weeding to get it presentable again. Tomorrow I'll do some fertilizing and a bit of spraying for a very persistent white fly infestation on some of my peppers. I've seen ladybugs on the plants, but they don't seem to be able to keep up so I'm going to have to deal with them soon as they're beginning to stunt the plants.

Sure could use some rain around here, but at least (for today anyway) we're not choking on smoke for days on end like we were earlier.

.....Alan.

The Poultry Schooner

Well, in addition to marauding pigs, spring soccer season, and Girl Scouts, the other thing making me crazy lately is chickens.

Now, I am forced to admit that I do know better than to order chicks before I have their housing squared away.

But I did it anyway.

So naturally it took three times longer to get their post-brooder housing built than I anticipated which turned it into a do-or-die undertaking because sooner or later I was going to run out of management tricks and they were going to start eating each other in the brooder for being overcrowded.

It's done now though so I am back on track. The permanent henyard is good and does its job well, but it doesn't advance the overall soil fertility of the homestead which is one of the major reasons I keep birds (the other reason being the food they produce). It works well if I clean out the henhouse and transport the litter to some place like the vegetable garden, but the rest of the place doesn't benefit. It is also not an easy task to mix grown birds with young birds in a confined space without casualties so if you can it's better to give each group their own space.

Thus the chicken tractor. It's not the first one I've built, more like the third, but it is the first of this particular design.

The original design comes from Robert Plamondon which can be found on his site herehttp://www.plamondon.com/hoop-coop.html. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll find a link to a .pdf file which is what I used.

But Robert uses his for turkeys and I wanted to use mine for laying hens so I modified the design as necessary to suit my needs.

Photo_01 shows the basic frame. Only the two runners are in actual ground contact. The two cross pieces are off the ground by about an inch and a half. This makes for less drag when the tractor is being moved. I made a mistake right off in putting it together in that I had the front oriented the wrong way as Robert did in his original plans. He mentioned changing the orientation so that he could see in the door as he was moving the thing which is what I wanted to do only to forget all about it as I was putting it together. I did it anyway but it left a gap between the panels as you'll see later. Future tractors will be correctly oriented.

Photo_02 shows the way I reinforced the corners to keep the frame from racking itself to pieces as it is being moved. Plamondon used cross members, but I chose to experiments with using short 4"x4" blocks on the inside of the corners. I drilled pilot holes then used three inch screws made for use with pressure treated wood. When I can I prefer to use screws like this rather than driving nails. I find they hold better under stress.







In Photo_03 I am bending the cattle panels. They're the standard 52 inch high by sixteen feet long panels available from farm supplies here in the States just about everywhere so far as I know. Tie a rope around one end, stand on the panel and walk towards the other end causing it to bend as you do. Tie the rope to the other end when it is bowed enough to suit you. In the photo I've got the panel situated outside the frame, but when the time came to nail it on I pulled the rope tighter so that I could have both ends on the inside of the frame as you'll see in the following photos. Do be sure you have the knots tight when you have the panel under tension like this as you don't want the thing to do a sudden impression of a spring as you're nailing it to the frame.



In Photo_04 here the front and back ends are being framed. The front end has the door so it is higher than the hoops so I can make the door as tall as possible. The back end is cut lower so as to stay within the hoops. All of the framing is pressure treated 1x4s. The bottom frame is pressure treated 2x4s. If this were a permanent structure I'd have built it heavier, but as this one is to be portable it needed to be kept as light as possible.

Plamondon uses a simple hatch to get inside, but I hung a proper door. To keep it from binding I left about an inch of clearance between the top and bottom of the door. The hardware cloth wire wraps around the top and bottom of the door to discourage anything trying to widen the gap by chewing to get inside.


Photo_05 shows how I tied the lumber to the cattle panels. Properly tightened they make a very secure bond. The wire is fourteen gauge electric fence wire. Any similar gauge galvanized wire should work. Tying the wood to the cattle panel like this gives the panel more rigidity which will come in useful later when it comes time to hang the interior furniture.










Photo_06 shows all of the wood framing front and back and the nest box already hung. With all of the wood in place I'm now ready to mount the hardware cloth wire.

But first I'll elaborate a bit on the nest box.






Photo_07 shows the nest box being hung. I planned on four nests which is actually more than I need, three would have sufficed. Each nest is 14" wide by that much deep by about ten inches deep. The bottom is half-inch hardware cloth. Sides were scrap plywood, the back was scrap 1x10s, framed with 2x2s. The front of the nest box is one 1x4 to make the box rigid which itself sits on top of one of the 1x4s of the framing then the whole thing is screwed together. This gives it a fair degree of rigidity. A hinged lid made of 2x2s and roofing tin will go over the top later.





Photo_08 shows the front of the nest box so you can see how I hung it on the frame. The interior partitions are whatever piece of scrap wood was laying around that would fit. The rope is tied to the hooks screwed into the box then tied to the framing so as to support the box while I was securing it to the frame.

Photo_09 shows the wire secured across the front. It's screwed to the wood using broad headed lath screws. Where it reaches the metal cattle panel I laced it on using seventeen gauge electric fence wire. A good deal of the whole tractor is sewn together like this. It's very secure - so long as old Brer Coon doesn't come up with wire cutters! {laughing}







Photo_10 shows the backside after the nest box lid has been mounted. The wire is laced to the cattle panel the same as with the front. The band of tin across the backside is for a bit of shade and rain protection for the nest box below. All of the tin is very much used. I'm big on salvaging everything I can.





Photo_11 shows the backside again after it's been moved to the corn patch. You can now see the latch holding the nest box lid closed and get a better view of how I laced the tin to the cattle panels and to the hardware cloth along the sides. I just sewed the whole thing together which is a good part of the reason it took so long to finish!

I used tin instead of a tarp such as what Robert Plamondon used because I wanted something raccoon proof and weather proof. He's in Oregon. Down here in Florida I'd have to replace that tarp several times a year (more if we had a lot of storms) for the sun rotting it out. I'd also have to run wire over the top of the cattle panels then put the tarp over it to make it coon proof.

I've suffered a lot with coons over the years so I tend to think of everything in terms of how resistant to the dang things I can make stuff.

The down side is that the tin significantly adds to the weight. Part of this is because it's old tin, from when the thicker gauge stuff was still common. If I had to use new tin of the thinner gauge that they pass off in places like Lowes and other "home improvement centers" now it would weigh somewhat less, but still not as little as a simple tarp would make it.

Photo_12 shows the interior furniture made from saplings cut out of a brushy area on the property. The support limbs holding the roosts up are wired to the panel where they meet. On the other end each line coming down from overhead is a twisted pair of fourteen gauge electric fence wire, one on each end and the one in the middle. I believe it'll hold at least twenty grown birds. The waterer and feeder are hanging from some old pieces of braided nylon rope I had laying around.

I didn't get a good photo of the tin going onto the panels. On the ends and at the bottom where it reaches the hardware cloth on each side I laced it all together with seventeen gauge wire. Where each piece of tin overlaps another I drilled holes then secured the two pieces together using steel pop rivets with pop rivet washers on the inside. So far they've held quite tight. I was concerned about the tin coming loose in a storm.



Photo_13 shows the tractor full of chicks!










Those are purebreds though so much too valuable to risk on an as yet unproven design so I swapped them out for the birds in Photo_14

Now, what isn't shown is how to keep old Brer Coon from coming in under the bottom of the tractor. That design changed in mid-stream so I haven't taken photos yet.

The design I'm trying at the moment is using plastic-coated 2"x4" steel garden fencing that I've laid on the ground around all four sides. The edge touching the tractor frame is stapled in place. The corners will be laced together to keep them from coming part. The wire just lays flat on the ground extending the two feet out from the sides.

The idea is that animals will go to the bottom of the fence or wall to start digging which of course is not possible since they'll be standing on top of the wire when they do.

The question is whether Brer Coon is smart enough to back off the two feet to go under the wire to get to the bottom of the tractor wall? So far, so good.

I've got a total of thirty four to go into the tractor, but for the first week or so I'm only risking a dozen. If nothing manages to breach the defenses to eat them I'll move the rest this coming weekend.

Eight of the birds are for the father of a friend of mine which will leave me twenty six. In a month or two I'll take what I've learned with this prototype to build a second tractor then split the birds thirteen each between them.

So, why do I call it a "Poultry Schooner?"

Because as I was putting the thing together it occurred to me that the tractor looked somewhat like one of the old "Prairie Schooners" of the American westward expansion of the nineteenth century without the running gear underneath. The Poultry Schooner will be pulled across the Dun Hagan prairie by a dumb ox (that would be me) just as the original Prairie Schooners were. Alternatively I've considered calling it the Cracker Schooner, but then Florida Cracker might think I was poking at him or something. {laughing}


Come this winter I hope to start hatching my own chicks.

We'll see.

Wish me luck!

.....Alan.

I'm not dead.

I'm not dead and I haven't stopped getting stuff done. This last month though has been a combination of stressful, frustrating, and frenetic so I haven't had much time to think about the blog.

I'll try to rectify that this weekend with some photos of what I've been doing.

Until then here's a couple that I did take.
Yes, that's a pig. About a three hundred pound boar in my estimation and he's in my henyard. In fact before the situation finally resolved itself I ran him out of there THREE times in two days. The last time with a behind full of birdshot after he wrecked my feeder shelter (you can see the feeder laying on the ground). We've had the place for going on six years now and the first four years or so I'd see a single feral pig two or three times a year and once I'd run it off wouldn't see it again.

Until this year. They started showing up in groups. Then they started showing up in herds. Caught one in my garden which motivated me to fence it in as some of you may recall. I'd run them off and they'd come back. At their peak I counted twelve pigs one morning standing outside the newly installed garden fence. I could tell they weren't feral pigs but looked more like someone's recently escaped domestics. With the lake and all out there I could not determine where they were coming from for me to be able to contact their owner (if they had one). This boar hog was the final straw. A three hundred pound (or thereabouts) boar pig is no joke, especially when my children play outside so this had to be brought to an end. That last time as I was seeing him off the property I finally discovered who they all belonged to as the neighboring property owner happened to be driving by (he doesn't live on that parcel). He and I had quite the shouting match about his free-roaming pigs. Never did see any signs of his hog pens so I have no idea of where he was keeping the things. I suspect he was simply letting them roam and keeping them in the area by feeding them regularly. That ended after our discussion and he rounded them all up.

This is the first time I ran him off:

On foot he wasn't taking me too seriously but in the truck he realized I was much bigger than him so we had us a little race around the property then around the pond. Every time he'd slow down I'd bump him in the butt to encourage him to keep running. Finally lost him in some heavy brush and figured I wouldn't see him again.

Until he came back again that afternoon.

And again the next afternoon when I'd finally had enough of him and sent him off with his behind stinging.

I'd rather have the Mongol Horde ride across the property than a free roaming herd of pigs!

The vegetable garden has been planted. I got it in late thanks to our odd Spring weather this year, but it's in. Haven't had a chance to mulch it yet, but it's growing. Most of it anyway. Lost the entire first planting of sweet potatos and the row of sunflowers. I was blaming the squirrels for that seeing as how they've wiped out my corn and peanut plantings in the past. They may have had something to do with the potatos too but last night I discovered the real culprits.

The garden is fenced in 2"x4" no-climb so they can't go through the fence and they can't go under the fence, but this pair did a Peter Rabbit on me going under the gate which I had not yet put a sill under. They were in the act of eating the second planting of sweet potatos that I'd just planted last weekend when they were themselves harvested. I'd been spraying the plants with a hot pepper garlic spray to discourage the squirrels (which generally works) but apparently it only makes them the more toothsome to the lagamorphic palate!

If Old Mr. McGregor had had a shotgun instead of a rake he'd have been able to put Peter in a pie (Beatrix Potter was NOT a gardener!)

The Kinder Major needed something to cook for her 'prairie meal' to finish her Laura Ingalls Wilder badge for the Scouts and now she has it. In the words of Master Samwise "…there's only one way to eat a brace of conies…" so it'll be stew this Sunday!

Between squirrels, marauding pigs, and clever rabbits it can be hard to get a garden in sometimes.

Stay out of my garden! I'm getting testy...

.....Alan.