Sunday we went over to a neighbor’s house to finish getting his chicken coop ready for chickens. It now has chicken wire over all the windows and around the entire yard with bird netting over the entire chicken yard. He is all ready for chickens. I will hopefully be getting a few laying hens over there in the next week. He doesn’t want a rooster so I will have to get rid of the third rooster we now have. I usually only keep one rooster but we now have the chickens ranging up past the old chicken coop, behind the barn and up on the back hillside. Both roosters are trying very hard to keep apart and it is leading to a much wider roaming region.
Mr Rainman went over with me and we got our trailer loaded with an old cow feeder, a wind directional feeder, an old grain bin that used to be on a very old combine and an old cook stove. The cow feeder just needed rolled out into the pasture and filled with hay. The wind directional feeder needs a wire bucket installed so the hay will be contained while the horse is eating it. The grain bin is big and should hold a lot of grain but the entire bottom is rusted out. We poked holes in it while we were loading it. We knew this before we loaded it but reality set in when the tractor forks went through the floor. The stove just needs a wire wheel brush and some new stove black paint to get it back in shape.
We are going to put the stove in the gazebo. I will cut a vent hole in the door of the gazebo and make a covered wood pile out next to the corral. We won’t need that much wood and it will all have to be fairly small to fit into the fire box on the stove. The fire box and ash box are in great shape and do not need any repairs. The floor has to go into the gazebo before the stove can be set.
I will need to get some sheet metal to fix the grain bin. I am thinking 1/16” should be plenty thick. I am not sure what gauge of sheet metal that corresponds to, Google will have to tell me. Google says it is almost 14 gauge so I guess 14 gauge is what I will use. I will definitely need to practice first and I suspect the wire feed is going to be the key to my success when working with sheet metal.
The wheat field has gotten enough water to really shoot up and is doing well. The mild temperatures have been allowing it to grow.
Stewart Creek Somethings 