The Way of the Rasp

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I’ve finally moved the new chicken coop down to the run and started on the siding.

It’s clapboard siding: old cedar planks recovered from the raised beds of an abandoned garden and slats from my pallet collection. None of these boards are matching lengths for any side of the coop; they need to be cut to length. There is a certain amount of squareness required so the board ends fit relatively flush with each other as the siding goes up.

But inevitably, they don’t meet flush enough and corrections need to be made.

Cut a new board? No, no.

Enter the rasp. Number three on my list of Top 5 Favorite Tools.

For a novice woodworker like myself, the rasp is invaluable. It literally smooths out the bumps along the Learning Curve. It allows me to correct things that might otherwise prevent the precise joining of two pieces of wood and require starting all over again: unsquare cuts, incorrect measurement, even rough and raggedy edges. The rasp is a time, energy and resource saver.

The rasp is also a primary tool in it’s own right. I’ve found it to be a key step in crafting axe and mallet handles. It allows incremental fine tuning of the grip to fit your hand and of the neck to fit the eye of the tool head. The rasp also puts a great bevel on the lead end of a tenon or peg, making it easier to insert.

I like to think all the best woodworkers use a rasp. They keep one in some hidden apron pocket, pull it out for several critical passes when no one is looking, then hide it away again before the secret of their craftsmanship is discovered.

That beautiful dresser made of cherry and maple, whose every joint is the unmistakable light-dark zipper pattern of dovetails…? Chisel and mallet work, right?

Ha. Total rasp job.

Or so I tell myself.

Chick pile-ups: the silent killer

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Looks like the early morning chick-checks will be continuing. I found one of the chicks dead this weekend, apparently suffocated and crushed under the others.

Chick pile-ups happen. If the temp is too cold, the chicks will cram together trying to stay warm. If they cram into a corner, a chick can get trapped on the bottom of the pile and die.

Keeping the hutch properly heated is a system of approximation; I got my approximation wrong this time. We’ve had some flukey Spring weather recently. On the day in question, it felt like full-on Fall and the hutch didn’t stay warm enough. Additionally, the heat lamp was focused at one end of the hutch so the chicks would be able to go to the other end if the temps got too hot; unfortunately, this just encouraged the chicks to pile up in one spot looking for warmth.

To prevent any future chick pile-ups, I’m doing the following:

* Increase the temperature and keep the focus of the heat out of corners. A no-brainer, right? However, pile-ups can also happen if the hutch is too hot. If the heat lamps are too intense and there is no easy way to get out from under them, the chicks might all bunch up into a single corner trying to escape the heat from above.

* “Remove” the corners of hutch by rounding them out. Heck, even if I get my approximation spot on, a chick pile-up could happen for no obvious reason whatsoever. I used a rolled up towel to round out the corners of my hutch. Others have recommended rolled cardboard.

* Keep paying attention. Mainly to make sure my preventative efforts are actually working. Also, I’ve been breaking up the chicks when they seem to be bunching together too tightly.

At 3:15 am this morning, all was well. The chicks were spread out, chirping in their contented fashion, even moving around and eating. But this cold snap is going to be here for a few days; regular checking will continue.

If you think chick-checks like this are crazy, you’ve obviously never had to deal with real livestock issues. Like sheep ready to give birth.

Neither have I, thankfully. I get little enough sleep as it is.

••
Additional Info:
Will III, O.H. (2007, September). Nothing to Brood About: The Lowdown on Raising Chicks. Retrieved from http://www.grit.com/Animals/Nothing-to-Brood-About-The-Lowdown-on-Raising-Chicks.aspx

The crap I get to deal with… Thank you.

Yesterday evening was one of “those” evenings.

I got home later than I wanted. I parked next to a truck that is dead in the driveway and should have been towed weeks ago. I walked past the skeleton of a chicken coop that is not progressing at the speed I want. I went into a home that has dishes accumulating, dog-hair tumbleweeds dancing across the floor and a toilet bowl crying uncle. The lawn needed to be mowed before the rain comes in later this week, which meant putting off splitting firewood for at least another day. And what am I going to do about my tomato sprouts that may have gotten burned in the sun, prognosis undetermined?

But as I finished up the lawn, letting the mower sputter from grinding roar to sudden silence, I stood still for a moment.

I saw the day fading in pinks and blues in the sky. Heard peepers calling from down in the marsh and a barred owl making himself known up in the woods. Smelled the fresh-cut grass. Felt the breeze of a warm Spring evening.

Goddamn, I’m a lucky son of a bitch.

I know this isn’t news to anyone, but Life is full of crap that has to be dealt with. There’s just no getting around it. If it’s not one thing, it’s another, right?

I’m blessed that this is the crap I get to deal with.

Chickens and the wisdom of Bruce Lee

1:00 am.

I turn off the alarm and head downstairs to the workshop. I need to check on the new chicks.

I don’t intend to make 1:00 am chick-checks a habit. But during these first few days, I need to be sure I’ve got the hutch temperature squared away.

Keeping the chicks healthy and warm at the right temp isn’t rocket science. It’s really just a system of approximation: raising or lower the heat lamps relative to the hutch and paying attention to the chicks’ behavior.

When I look in on them, they are all in the same area of the hutch, sleeping singly or in small groups. They sleep flat on their bellies, wings slightly spread, their backs made wide to soak up the warmth coming from above. A few of the chicks have their necks stretched long, heads resting on one side or face down in the wood shavings. It’s a uniquely infant pose of comfort and innocence.

Watching them, I can’t help but think what this next year with chickens will bring. I am struck by the notion that what I have planned and what actually will be could turn out vastly different. As it was with my first birds.

But with my first birds, I didn’t have expectations. Everything was new, everything was a surprise. I had no concept of what the chicken experience could be like, one way or another. A chicken was just a chicken.

Believe it or not, Bruce Lee actually has some sound advice about this:

Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick.

After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick.

Now that I’ve understood the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick.

I have entered my own time of focused learning about every aspect of raising chickens. Doing it right. Understanding the art.

I’m looking forward to when a chicken is just like a chicken again.

Who’s ready for some new chicks?

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That’s right: Year Two with chickens is about to get started.

I took down the old coop.
Doing this was kind of sad. It was the first time I really got back into the coop since clearing out the chicken carcasses; everything was exactly how I had left it, including feathers scattered everywhere.

But taking down the old coop is — literally — the only way to move on. The location and materials are needed to build the new coop. The experience with my first flock — both good and bad — are needed to build the new coop, as well.

On the other hand, tearing down the old a-frame was also a nice affirmation of my preferred construction style: the Way of the Screw. I don’t use nails for any of these small scale construction projects; it’s screws all the way. This is because I think in terms of reuse: at some point I will not want the thing I have built and it will need to come down, but the materials will still be good for something else. A cordless drill (the fourth Greatest Invention of Mankind) makes it a synch to back out all the screws; there’s no struggling to pry out old nails and — most importantly — no damaging the wood. Almost all of the wood from the old coop already has another life planned for it. For example: the roof of the old will become the floor of the new.

I have started the new coop.
More accurately: I’ve re-started the new coop. If you recall, way back in December I was making a push to set up a new shed-style coop before Winter set in. But Winter won.

This was fortunate.

During the forced delay I read the book Fresh Air Poultry Houses, written by Prince T. Woods in 1924. It’s an outstanding resource that talks about how to keep chickens healthy and productive through even the roughest winter weather in low-tech style. It was written at a time when backyard flocks were common among American families and no one had electricity running to their coop. The numerous plans and examples of fresh air style coops continue to be extremely helpful as I build my own.

The weasel attack also forced a rethinking the coop design. It forced me to think not only about the security of the main structure but also how to keep my birds safe while at the same time allowing them to roam free. I have a few low-tech ideas in mind (think “chicken moat”) and they will also require an adjustment of the coop design.

Putting all of these new elements together has highlighted another characteristic of my construction style: I like to step back from whatever it is I’m working on and dream it forward for awhile. Sure, I plan things out on paper but I always pause to observe what I’ve done and thinking about where I can head from there. Were my paper-plans correct? Or is there a better way? This thoughtfulness doesn’t lend to speedy construction but does help making novice mistakes and needing to backtrack.

Of course, this thoughtful construction process means the new coop will not be complete until after the new chicks arrive.

I have the chick hutch set up.
The weeks-old chicks wouldn’t be able to go in the coop even if it were finished; it would be too cold and unprotected for them. The new chicks will stay in a little a-frame hutch I bought from some big box country store until they have grown enough to handle outdoor temps.

Getting the hutch prepared has required three important steps.

Cleaning it: I physically cleaned out all the crap that’s accumulated in the hutch during the Winter: brush. Then I sprayed the whole interior with bleach, mixed in the same ratio you would use to clean a countertop. You never know what kind of bacterial nastiness lurking in a corner could make your new birds sick.

Weasel-proofing it: Much time was spent covering all possible entry points with hardware cloth and making sure each door could be secured in a way that only animals with opposable thumbs can open them. I feel like I’d be pushing my luck to formally declare the hutch weasel-proof, but I am far more confident in it’s weasel-resistant qualities than before.

Heating it: I’ve been making sure that I can keep the hutch heated appropriately at all times for the new chicks. In their first week of life, chicks need the ambient temp to be 95 deg F; each week the ambient temp can be decreased by 5 deg F until the chickens are hardy enough to be on their own. This means rigging up a heat lamp over the coop and being certain that appropriate temps can be maintained day and night.

For the newbies out there: always use a red heat lamp. Apparently, white or yellow heat lamps cause the chicks to become really agitated and aggressive towards each other. And it’s certainly much easier to sleep in red light than blazing white or yellow, which means keeping the light on at night won’t deprive the chicks of sleep.

So the only thing left to do is get the chicks.
My friend turned me on to this great local place, Nature Berry Farm. It’s not so much a farm as it is chicken-overload in someone’s backyard. But the owners clearly know and care about what they’re doing. And they’ve got a great variety of breeds.

This year I’m sticking with Rhode Island Reds and Ameraucanas. Both were workhorses with egg production. However, instead of Speckled Sussex birds, I’ll be adding Barred Rocks.

Last Friday, Nature Berry’s web site said that — fortunately — all three breeds had just become available that day. I planned to roll this Monday to get my new birds. Until Sunday night, when the website said that — unfortunately — all the three breeds had sold out.

Are you kidding me? How does that happen?

The folks at Nature Berry confirmed that they had in fact sold out in a day and that, yes, it was a crazy turn of events. But just a couple days later they contacted me with information about a “top secret, very hush hush” new order of all three breeds coming this week. How many did I want them to hold for me?

Those Nature Berry Farm folks are too cool.

Guess what I went and picked up tonight…

••
Additional Info:
BackYard Chickens (2011, September). White or Red Heat Lamp [forum]. Retrieved from http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/573390/white-or-red-heat-lamp

Hamre, M. (2008). Hatching and Brooding Small Numbers of Chicks. Retrieved from http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/livestocksystems/di0631.html

Nature Berry Farm, www.natureberryfarm.com

Wood, P. (1924). Fresh-Air Poultry Houses. Reprint by Norton Creek Press.

Wither go my sprouts?

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Much like the real Supreme Court, my own little SCOTUS may not render a final judgement until the summer. And things are still looking split among the presiding powers.

The tomato sprouts continue to come up strong, which I’m feeling particularly proud of. I’ve gotten them this far in low-tech style: planted in newspaper pots, warmed to appropriate temps with the wood stove, and fed only natural light through the window. To keep the sprouts from getting too leggy while stretching for the window, everyday I brush them with my hand and rotate each plant so that it has to stretch in the opposite direction. And here’s a funny consideration: it’s possible the cooler-than-ideal house temps have slowed the tomatoes’ post-germination growth and helped prevent exaggerated stretch.

I’ve already got canning on the brain and high hopes for the tomatoes.

My eggplants and peppers, on the other hand, have been a disaster. We’re talking attrition rates of over 90%, especially if we include the need to restart both batches of seeds.

Initially, I felt good about the eggplant restart. All of the seeds sprouted and they had their cotyledons spread wide. Until a week ago. Then, one by one, they nearly all withered and died. What the hell?

Could I have over-watered or kept them too damp? Did they damp off because of some fungal infection? Or did I damage the roots when thinning out the multiple sprouts in each pot? This is something I learned after the fact: if you sow multiple seeds in the same pot, clip the seedlings to thin them; don’t pull them out. Pulling out seedlings in such tight quarters can damage the root structure of the other seedlings you want to keep.

I took a look at the roots of a couple of the withered eggplants but I couldn’t tell you if there was any damage indicating either damping off or improper thinning. My knowledge just doesn’t run that deep yet. What I can tell you is that I’ve raised the tomato sprouts in exactly the same way as the eggplants — including how I thinned them — and the tomatoes have grown just fine.

The peppers weren’t as cruel as the eggplants; they never even bothered to sprout and never created false hope of success. Except for one, which I noticed only when I was getting ready to dump the pots.

But this single pepper sprout appears to be staging a come back.

And the single remaining eggplant just started to show it’s real leaves between its cotyledons.

As are my basil sprouts. (By the way, I started some Dark Opal Basil a few weeks ago.)

All of which leaves me hopeful of the outcomes later this summer.

••
Additional info:
Clothier, T. Damping-off Diseases. Retrieved from http://tomclothier.hort.net/page13.html

Galbraith, T. (2010, April 18. Seed Starting Problems to Avoid. Retrieved from http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2852/

Iannotti, M. Are Your Seeds Starving? Retrieved from http://gardening.about.com/b/2013/02/24/when-to-feed-seedings.htm

Nicolaus, J. (2008, February 7). The Dreaded Damping Off (and How to Prevent It). Retrieved from http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/277/

Pleasant, B. (2013, January). Best Tips for Starting Seeds Indoors. Retrieved from http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/starting-seeds-indoors-zm0z12djzsor.aspx

Spring, at last

I don’t know about anyone else, but this Winter was rough. It felt particularly cold and dark, hard and grueling. It seemed to last a hundred years. It felt like fairer weather never had been and never would be again.

Yet here we are. Spring, at last.

Building with pallets: whose bright idea was this?

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Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been building raised beds and a couple of new gates for the garden. From old pallets. Which seemed like a pretty clever idea.

Pallets are free. And when you have a key pallet connection like I have, they’re easy to come by. Pallet wood is by no means high quality stuff and it’s always a random assortment. But it’s strong enough to be kicked around and beat up during the rigors of shipping cargo, which is all I’m looking for. And it’s free.

However, let me share a couple things I have learned about pallets that may temper the freeganistic, Pinterest-fueled motivation so many of us have in repurposing pallets for more creative uses.

#1 Nails

Pallets are held together with nails, right? These nails are designed and intended to keep a pallet in one piece while it’s being kicked around and beat up. And they do a good job. They’re basically “don’t f with me” nails.

Of course, if your creative plans involve taking the pallets apart, you’re going to have to f with the nails.

My particular plans for the raised beds and the gates are based on removing and rearranging planks.

If you try to pry the planks off a pallet, you end up destroying them because the nails don’t want to let go. If you cut through the plank around where it is nailed to the frame, you’re just destroying planks in a more orderly fashion. If you cut through the nails with a sawzall (between the plank and the frame), you get a complete plank but leave most of the nail embedded in the wood frame.

Then when you try to cut through the wood frame, you’ll wreck your circular saw blade. Or two. Maybe damage a third and wonder aloud who let the dumbass in the workshop before you figure this isn’t a good idea.

I asked a buddy of mine if he had any ideas for cutting through nails in wood like this; he’s a carpenter of several decades and an all-around smart dude. His response:

“I decided years ago that even for free, pallets are not a worthwhile source of material. Everything that makes a pallet perfectly suited to be a pallet makes it a total pain in the ass to use for anything else. The nails they use are case hardened, usually spiraled, and “cement coated”. The pallets are also usually built green and then dried which also shrinks the wood fibers around the nails. Those case-hardened nails are sudden death to even carbide blades.”

Not encouraging. Mostly because he’s right when he concludes, “Pallets are a perfect example of evolutionary specialization.”

CAN you find a way to get past, through or around all these nails? Sure.

SHOULD you spend the time, energy and money to do it? I refer you back to the “free” rationale for using pallets. It implies your project should involve a minimal expenditure of time, energy and money to accomplish it. Once you get past this “minimal expenditure” part of working with pallets, you’re getting dangerously close to $64 tomato territory.

#2 Bacteria, poisons, and other assorted nastiness

Here’s another fun consideration: what kind of toxins, poisons or other undesirable substances are on the pallets?

Pallets are used to ship all sorts of things and sit in all sorts of places. Oils, chemicals, fecal matter, bacteria and an “all of the above” mixture can accumulate.

Fun fact: 10% of wood pallets have reportedly tested positive for E. coli.

Pallets can also be fumigated with methyl bromide to prevent unwanted insects from catching a lift between international locations. Methyl bromide is a particularly noxious substance, a known carcinogen and has been banned in most countries. But there’s an exception that allows methyl bromide to still be used for fumigating pallets. (Side note: it’s suspected that the Emerald Ash Borer got into this country hitchhiking on pallets, so I’m not wholly opposed to the fumigation.)

These are important things to think about in your repurposing.

I’m using pallets to build raised beds for the garden. A supposedly organic garden. Do I want all of this nastiness potentially getting into my food and soil?

Of course not.

Is this even likely to happen?

No one knows for sure. It’s not as if there’s been a major study about “the impact of repurposed pallet use in the garden on the toxicity levels in vegetables and surrounding plants.”

But there are some easy, common sense ways to minimize the potential for such contamination and still put pallets to good use.

Always inspect the pallets you want to use. If they look oily, stained or otherwise contaminated, don’t use them. Don’t let your excitement to repurpose get the better of you.

Any pallet that has been fumigated with methyl bromide is required to have “MB” printed on the side. You could also ask the person in charge of the pallets if any have been shipped internationally.

You can look for heat treated pallets. This is an alternative method for debugging. Heat treated pallets are cooked in hot air (~140 deg F) for at least 30 minutes to kill any hitchhikers. Unless some sort of nastiness has been spilled on them, heat treated pallets are just plain wood with no additional chemicals. And no bugs. Which seems to make them ideal for use in the garden and indoors. Heat treated pallets will have “HT” printed on the side.

And there are easy ways for dealing with the nails, too.

The sawzall works great for cutting the nails between plank and frame. The planks come off in one piece and are functional as uniform-sized material. Exactly what I need. Make sure you have metal-cutting blades.

And a plain old jigsaw with a cheap multi-purpose blade cuts right through both wood and embedded nails with unexpected ease.

When I told my buddy about the jigsaw solution, I prefaced the conversation with, “You’re not going to like this…” Because we share a low opinion about the brand of jigsaw.

“No, I DO like it. Any solution that works is a good one!”

Like I said: smart dude.

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Additional Info:
Alexander, W. (2007). The $64 Tomato.

Ammalahti, E. (2001, May 11). Heat-Treated Wood Provides Alternative to Hardwood. Retrieved from http://composite.about.com/library/PR/2001/bltekes1.htm

Pallets Unlimited. The Heat Treated Pallets Process . Retrieved from http://youtu.be/bQE3pkFa4B0

Pesticides Information Project (1993, September) Methyl Bromide. Retrieved from http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/haloxyfop-methylparathion/methyl-bromide-ext.html

Striepe, B. (2012, March 19). How to Tell If Wood Pallets are Safe for Crafting. Retrieved from http://greenupgrader.com/19085/how-to-tell-if-wood-pallets-are-safe-for-crafting/

Wikipedia. ISPM 15 (International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures No. 15). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ispm_15

Wikipedia. Pallet. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallet

Wikipedia. Wood Preservation. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_preservation

Chop, chop: only 6 months till Fall

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Spring couldn’t come soon enough this year. You’d never know it by our current weather: mud, rain, wind and 40 degree F temps. But technically-speaking, Spring has arrived. It ain’t Winter and I’ll take it.

I know what you’re thinking: How can I be worrying about Fall when Spring just got here? Who cares that Fall is only six months away?

Let’s work backwards on this one…

My one goal for next Winter is to avoid freezing to death. Since I’m going to be working hard over the next several months to get the garden running at higher capacity and restart the chicken flock even bigger than before, I’d like to enjoy the produce of these labors and not die with chattering teeth.

To avoid said death and partake of said produce, I will need to keep the wood stove fired up when the temperatures begin to drop.

Based on the records I keep of my own uber-local weather, I can tell you that temps will most likely dip into the 30s for the first time during the first few days of October. Which is roughly the start of Fall.

Which is roughly six months away.

To fire up the stove and keeping it running hot will require wood.

I’ve heated with nothing but wood since I moved in. When I bought the property, there was a giant pile of logs from the previous owners. Logs they had bought for firewood but never split and used completely. I chunked all of it by hand and the wood got me through three Winters.

But now that pile is gone.

The wood for my stove will now come from my own woodlot.

Green wood needs at least six months to dry before you can even think about trying to burn it. Ideally, you let it season for a year or more. But six months is the bare minimum to get any sort of thermal efficiency out of it.

So…

What’s the big deal that Fall is only six months away?

I have seen the enemy…

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And he’s a ballsy little weasel.

(Or maybe an ermine. Still working on my mustelidae identification skills. We’re going with generic “weasel” for now.)

He brazenly entered my workshop earlier this week, mid-day, while I was building new gates for the garden. The chicken carcasses were in the shop, double-bagged and waiting for disposal. The weasel went straight for them.

I tried to chase him out… which made herding cats look easy. This guy was all over. He was in corners, behind pallets and wood, up and down the beams, in the rafters, in and out of the ATV chassis. He even got behind me at one point, suddenly appearing on my workbench at the back of the shop.

He was not backing down. He was after the carcasses.

When I lost sight of him at one point, I hunkered down in a corner to wait; I could hear his little feet scurrying around. When he did reappear, I just watched.

I have to admit: this weasel is a beautiful animal. Snow white winter coat with only a touch of black on his face and the tip of his tail. When he moved, it was like flowing water. Every motion was smooth, methodical, and seamless with the next. And he was clearly making his own observations of everything in the shop; lots of sniffing and careful watching.

Eventually I chased him out. Or maybe he just decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.

I promptly boarded up the hole in outer door. I have not seen him since.

To be fair, I am presuming this is the enemy; I have no hard evidence that this particular weasel is the animal that killed my chickens.

However, I’ve never seen a weasel on my property before — much less facing off with me in my own workshop. And he was on a mission to get those carcasses. I’m hard pressed to think he’s not the killer coming back.

All options are on the table for keeping my future chickens safe from attack, including trapping or killing the weasel.

At the same time, a little voice in my head keeps misquoting Robert Frost: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”

Don’t ever take out a weasel until you know what else could be affected?

For example, from people way smarter than me: “Overall, weasels are more of an asset than a liability. They eat quantities of rats and mice that otherwise would eat and damage additional crops and produce… In fact, rats may have destroyed more poultry than the weasel. In most cases, a farmer lives with weasels on the farm for years without realizing that they are even there, until they kill a chicken.”

I haven’t seen a single mouse or any sign of mice around the property since early Winter. Which I’m happy about.

If my coop had actually been secure — no gaps in the structure and gates that closed — would I have even known there was a weasel around?

I’m willing to give preventive practices a shot.

For now.

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Additional Info:
Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management. Weasels. Retrieved from http://icwdm.org/handbook/carnivor/Weasels.asp

New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Remove or “Take” Nuisance Animals Legally. Retrieved from http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/81531.html

New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Tips to Eliminate Wildlife Conflicts. Retrieved from http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/89522.html

SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry, Adirondack Ecological Center. Long-tailed Weasel. Retrieved from http://www.esf.edu/aec/adk/mammals/longtailed_weasel.html