We do try. I think I’ve mentioned this before. We are making attempts and reusing as much as we can, throwing out as little as possible. Finding different uses for things that might end up in our trash. Granted… we do not do as much as we probably could with containers and the like. But we give it a go. We’re pretty good about using food scraps for the chickens and the dogs. We definitely are amazing at using the yogurt and cottage cheese containers until they disintegrate. We use our wire scrapes as much as possible and other bits that we accumulate. We’d love to get more experience using building cast-offs. Thought I’d talk about a couple of projects reusing, and then one that didn’t.

I may have mentioned that we’ve been having some skunk issues? We’ll, it’s true. I am happy that they want to dig up the ground and find all the Japanese beetle grubs and munch on them of an evening – but we are not happy that they dig into the chicken homes and steal the eggs. Bad skunks! We had a real problem with them stealing eggs from the little brooder that is by the house, we’ve been using it for sick chickens that need some time away; well, and that’s where the original two wanderers were housed, but they are back into the coop now. ANYWAY – Sue repurposed some doors that were given to us by a couple of friends and gave the brooders some floors. This is good because now the creatures (skunks, snakes, gophers, and the like) can’t dig under and get in. The only real drawback is that the chickens don’t have ready access to the dirt, but – hey- safety first.

This photo may, at first, be confusing. What you are actually supposed to notice is the welded avian wire that is sticking up from out of the ground in the doorway. Here it will be acting as a deterrent to those trying to dig into the ground outside the door. Did I talk about this already? We dug a trench outside of the coop at the Goat Boy’s house, lined it with extra pieces of wire, put heavy stones on top and then filled it back in. Seems I mentioned it recently. Well, we used bits and pieces of wire that might have otherwise found their way into the garbage. We know it’s not “skunk proof”, but we hope it will act as a deterrent.

The last project I wanted to show is the ongoing main coop improvement. This is a windbreak wall on the south side of the coop. It’s the end that is set up as a brooder. The chickens have a couple of small in/out doors here, but the wind is always blowing right in, so this was the attempt at keeping it at bay. Sue recently raised the height of the wall, because it was just too short. As it is currently the “windy season” we’ll be able to find out rather quickly if we need to go even higher. She’s been steadily working on the coop each week. I just need the wind to stop for a while on the weekend so I can help by painting the raw wood. We also have just a few areas of wire to complete in the “run” and then the chicken wire to go over the top. We have some grapes to plant in our containers, plus three more containers to pour! We’re getting there. I feel that it’s one of those projects that will continue to evolve.

This just in! Lance and Elise have offered us a double paned window. They are replacing one in their home and have offered the old one to us. For a while we were hoping to get many a cast off window from different areas, construction companies, etc. so that we could use them to make a greenhouse. Maybe it’s time to begin looking for windows in earnest. Hmmmm. That’d be a wonderful “re-use”, yes? I’ll let you know how our searching goes. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!