Redneck Engineering Saturday

They say that necessity is the mother if invention. That is often how our redneck engineering has come to pass. We live in Southern Arizona, so there is a lot of sandy soil, and very little grass. Therefore we bring in hay and feed, and grow fresh in container gardens in the pens. The problem is that when we clean pens, a lot of dirt gets shoveled out with the poop, and the ground level in the pens has slowly but steadily lead to lower ground in the goat pens. The chicken areas have easily had their holes filled over time, but the goats aren't so easy. We have tried several "scoop" solutions over the years, with this being our last incarnation...

Yep- hardware cloth over a horse pooper scooper, because the pellets would go right through otherwise. The problem with the scoop was you had to largely shake the scoop to get the dirt out, and that was another cloud of dust and allergy issues to deal with. So with Bailey getting ready to leave for summer, and kidding season almost upon us, Bailey and I sat at morning milking with a topic on our minds looking for something better. What else to do but raid the scrap pile?

There was a piece of hardware cloth (that stuff is awesome) used as a temporary fix on a fence panel that Wyatt and I are due to fix before that temp pen gets used again. So we didn't need it anymore, and procured it. Then to the woodpile. These boards seemed like a nice start. There were too more that size, but they would not work due to the size of the hardware cloth.  So Bailey headed off to the power tools.

She was a little concerned at one point about the edges and wood, but this isn't staying in the pen, only being used for muck. We are good with this. Here is how the "tool" came out.

Here it is in use. My milking doe, Mama Lulu wanted to help. Or be quality control. Or just be cuddled along the way, you never quite know with her!

This area of the pen- the doe barn has long been the worst. Which is awful, since their food is here! As we began shoveling large amounts of loose dirt out to get the poop, we confirmed just how low the dirt would go, and decided to add a concrete brick under each end of the hay feeder to bring a little stability and give us an idea where the level was when we finished.

Mama Lulu loves to ham it up for the camera, and started playing peekaboo from behind the hay feeder.

When we run the dirt throuh, the dirt falls down and leaves us with poop on top of the mesh. Then we dump the mesh into the muck wagon. If I had it to do over, one end would have a larger spot than this for the muck to run down to make it less messy dumping. Live and learn. But we did much better at leaving the dirt in the pen.

Here we are, part way done, with Versie checking things out.

They also liked to walk wherever we just cleaned and leave us more work to do!

Silver and Glory wanted to get in on the action. They wanted to help spread out the piles of dirt. Too bad they didn't want to carry them back to the doe barn!

Lulu saw the camera, had to scratch her chin as the sun was goig down behind her.

Goofy girl!

Here we were almost done. We will never get every single piece of poop and leave the dirt behind, but this worked much better! Score one for the Patriot's Dream girls and a little Saturday ingenuity!

The does ended up wanting two yellow "ribbons" to decorate for memorial day. I offered them their red white and blue ones from the shed, but they liked these from their hay bales and the yellow that even though we pay our respects this weekend to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, we don't forget those presently with boots on the ground while we are here at home.

Wyatt has decided he is going to show pygmy goats as well next year. He always said that he would as soon as they let him show bucks, which they won't, but he rather likes little McAllie. So Bailey taught him to trim hooves last night.

Well, that made for a productive day for us, even if we did want to get more done. What redneck engineering have you tried? Care to share with us?

My New Purse

I have been needing a new purse.  But being who I am,  I carry a good bit of stuff with me most days.  Things like batteries for the aerobics microphone and a water bottle and lots of little things like that, to help me attempt to keep up with this crazy life. 

A couple of years ago,  Charlie's unit switched to the new style of BDUs.  When he could no longer wear the style he had worn when I first met him,  I asked Charlie to pack the old uniforms away for future projects, and just in case the kids wanted them.  And I rather thought this project would come along. 

I made a similar purse for my niece last year, and about a month ago, I asked Charlie to sit out a few sets for me to work on some projects with.  As I began to cut this out, We made a few camouflage stockings, and Wyatt even learned to use the sewing machine while making one. 

As luck would have it, the uniform which would become my new purse was one of his favorites, sporting some random paint for character. The outside reveals four pockets,  including two with unit insignia. The inside has six, formed from material from the jacket back and arm, just for fun. 

So here is the finished product, complete with handles found on after Christmas sale at the fabric store!

Here it is,  almost completely loaded,  and with room to spare! Next up? Making one specifically designed for and by Bailey.  AND this next one will have goat patches,  too!  Stay tuned for that design,  coming soon!  Though for now, this edition got Charlie's seal of approval,  telling me that it looked good enough to make for sale. 

It is pretty exciting when he likes my work! But for now, I will be doing most of my work on a by request basis, so that my time is focused on what matters. So I have to ask, if you could design your own purse, what fabric would you choose, and what features would you want?

Water Harvesting Project, prototype one

One of the ongoing sustainability concerns for farming in the desert is water. This is a big issue, actually, with many large scale commercial farming practices using older methods of irrigation which often cannot be viable in the long term with the ever increasing number of people using the limited water supply.

Drought is commonplace, and extreme drought has brought frightening pictures and a concern for the future.  Some states have outlawed water harvesting in the hopes of recharging dwindling supplies in underground aquifers. 

I really feel that we can appropriately harvest water while recharging aquifers and responsibly reducing consumption, though it does require all of  to work together and not waste. 

We have put lots of research into making a water harvesting system for our veggies,  and as we get better, we will also apply this to our sprouting system within the livestock pens, which should also help with flooding concerns in the rainy season. 

This is our first prototype.  We began with a blue barrel. Even though it was considered food safe,  I soaked it three time with water and an ACE (apple cider vinegar) and water dilution before beginning. 

While my husband recommended a larger saw, I have issues with my hands,  and went for the smaller one! I used twine to set my line for cutting around the top. Despite the two holes already there, I know that I will need access to scrub the barrel out between seasons, as well as access for working on the bulkhead attachments.

Then I got to play with power tools. Off came the top of the barrel. That part was easy!

I had several of these blocks laying around- actually like five of them, so not enough for too much, but enough for this spot. I started off with two blocks- a single thickness, then added the additional since the overflow barrel is supposed to be a bit lower, and because I wanted plenty of clearance around the house bib.

Then it was time for MORE CLEANING. High power with the hose, then three more rounds with ACV, alternated with the hose. ACV is also great for keeping the algae down and the bugs away, so I put a little more in before I reassembled the while thing, too.

I just put the ACV straight in a spray bottle lots of uses for that!

Then I needed something to keep the top of the barrel on, so I improvised a little. I had some wooden dowels left over from another project, so I used roofing screws from yet another project to attached them to the outside. Note for future reference on this one- I put one of them right near a seam, and it is a little close to the lid top seam in that spot, so I have to be really careful putting the lid back on.

Here it is with the lid on, at the corner of the house. That is a pomegranate tree right behind, and there are several other plants along that edge of the porch.

I knew I neened a hole saw for the bulkhead that the hose bib would screw into. What I had was designed for wood. Rather than go crazy and buy another, I tried a test hole in the top first. It came out fine, so it was time to put the bulkhead hole in!

Fortunately, that was pretty easy. The sizes I had for hole saw bits were pretty close, and the first one I drilled was not quite big enough for the threads, so I ended up needing a second go round. That's okay, though, it worked.

The bulkheads are easily found at your neighborhood hardware store. Funny thing, these actually thread left handed. That was weird, but it went in easily, with a gasket to provide the seal from leaks on each side.

The outside was just as easy, too.

Then, with plumber's tape around the threads of the hose bib, it went in easily itself.  We chose for it to angle down and away fro the porch to make the hose work easier for me.

Then I needed something in the top to let water in and keep gunk out. That started with a hole around the area where the test hole had gone.

Things were starting to look almost functional by this point!

Here is the close up of the fancy-dancy hose bib and bulkhead work.

Okay, so at that popoint I took a break to actually get dinner on the table, and then came back to work on the screening. I decided to go a little crazy with the caulking. And to keep the mesh down, I went high tech with a plant from the porch.

Pretty fancy, huh?

In the end, that didn't stay very flat, so I may screw it down with washers. We will have to see on that one!

Well, here is the prototype. As I type this, a storm is threatening, so I am REALLY hoping to get to see how it works tonight! On that note, here is to reducing waste and reusing where we can, and farming sustain-ably!

What projects have you tried? We would love for you to share all you have learned so we can all learn together! Have a great night.

New Doe Barn Project- part 2

After church today, we were a little late heading out as the Bailey was creating plans to bring chicks and blown eggs in for a unit in the Sunday school class she helps with. By the time she and her friend were done, they were planning to sneak chicks home with the youth minister's daughter! While I think chickens are a decision the parents have to be willing to give thumbs up to, I got a good laugh out of it, but we were a bit late headed home, and missed the Tumamoc walk for today.

A friend of Charlie's from work has been working hard to prepare a coop and came by today for chickens.  They decided to start out with slightly older birds, two new layers and one three month old. I know they will be well loved. We gave them some food to mix in, and are so excited to see more folks with coops in town. 

We got a bit of a late start working on the doe barn project, but did get two posts in, and the side panels attached to those two.

They are bolted in with ten inch carriage bolts.  We are using bricks underneath, since we want the wood up above the termite level.

This is the back corner. It took a little work, but the first two panels are level, and we will keep adding on this week.

This end will still need some work after the upright goes in later this week.  We wired on a gate as a panel for now, since hte does really need some room to get around with a very grumpy, likely pregnant Silver.

We ended up swinging the panels back out, Bailey was removing brackets and reattaching them as the larger pen while I was doing a few waters in my pens.

This larger panel is temporarily there as more security.  There will be more rearranging each day this week as we go!

This is the door Wyatt designed and built from recycled materials for the other special pen project. That one is still ongoing, hoping to get more done with it tomorrow afternoon when we take a break from school work for a bit!

Well, we plan to show the progress as it goes, and are looking forward to being done and having a beautiful new space for the does! Have a great project for your animals? Would you like to share? Send it on over!

The New Doe Barn Project- part 1

Many of you are already aware that the doe barn has been a challenge for us for quite some time. We have made many repairs to keep it going, but then in the last storm, it was reduced to a pile of rubble.

Bailey and I looked at several options, and talked a good while with her Daddy. We decided to use some skids Charlie had brought home fro the base (they were going to throw them away), along with uprights and roofing, to construct a shelter that would keep out the elements but not get too hot during the Summer. Bailey got busy drawing plans, and with me on Spring Break from teaching college this week, Charlie agreed to spend time setting it up with us.  We might not have it all set up right away, but since we believe Silver to be bred, we cannot rely on the shelter of the kidding pen for much longer!

Charlie works really late, and we got started tearing the old barn down and gave him a chance to sleep a bit. We had framed out the inside of the shed before to keep it working as a barn, so we had to take it apart as best we could.

Here she is pulling old screws and moving the railroad ties from the edge so we could move fence panels.

The does are protesting their temporary smaller digs by squeezing all of them into the little brown house in the kidding pen and giving dirty looks...

The presently have about half of what they usually do, but plenty of food, water and she. They will be glad to have their toys back when we finish though!

Charlie used the quad to drag the skids in, then the boys helped stack the metal for reuse and the railroad ties for later evaluation.

It looks rather empty there! Although you likely have to look hard to see it, the farm Quality Assurance team (aka the Geese) came through for a first walk through, as they do with every project around here.

After the skids were drug in, we worked as a team to put them in place on bricks, and  braced them in place since we had been unable to pick up the uprights first. The uprights will be attached Thursday, and then we will add the roof supports and the third wall of their structure.

Though accidentally, it looks like the does will gain some living and playing pace from the makeover, which I imagine they will love once their other toys go back in!

We are still reforming this panel, which was twisted int he mess when the storm hit the barn. Bailey constructed this section of the temporary pen so the does have as much access as possible to the smaller play area.

This is their temporary pen, about 20x40 for the three does.  We cannot wait to see this project come together!