Chicken Waterer

There are a few things that define my farming style.  Two of the main ones are practicality and creating less work for myself. Practicality- I am much more into things being useful and serving a purpose than looking good.  That is why you don't see a lot of flowers around my house. I would much rather spend my time on plants I can eat than ones I can just look at. The other big thing is doing as a little work as I have to.  Farms are a lot of work and I always have something to do.  So anything I can do to create less work for myself is good.
One of the things I have recently done to create less work is to build a chicken waterer that will hold more water so we have to water the chickens less often. Margo mostly does the watering and feeding of the chickens so keeping her happy by her doing less work is good too. Several years ago I built a chicken feeder so that we did not have to feed them every few days. I posted it about it here if you want to check it out. I have made a few alterations to it since then.  We usually put 150lbs or so of feed in there which means we only have to fill up the feeder about once a month or so (for 25-30 chickens). At our last two houses we had ponds relatively close to the chicken coop so the chickens would get a lot of their water from there and we did not have to fill up the waterer in their coop very often. At our current house, the pond is a long ways off and so we were having to fill up our 5 gallon waterer almost every day.  Margo was not a fan of that and it was bad for when we had to be gone for several days.  So I started to do some research on ways to make bigger chicken waters (that don't use "city water").  I found some good ideas using nipple waters and used those ideas to create my set-up.  I ended up putting up some old gutters on my chicken coop and ran those into a 55 gallon plastic drum that is on a stand.  I have pvc coming out of that which goes into the chicken run. I then hooked a long section of pvc to that  and screwed in nipple waterers to that.  For my chicken coop roof (16x9) it takes about 1/2 inch of rain to fill up the barrel. We have had it for 2-3 months and the rains have kept it full. It only took the chickens a couple days to get used to it.  I would probably design it a little different if I did it again but so far it is doing great.

As you can see I hooked the gutter directly into the barrel, I used some wire mesh as a screen to keep out debris so it would not stop up the pipe or nipple waterers.  I have the pvc coming out of the bottom.  One of the caps on a drum like this has threads for a pipe hookup so I just used that to screw in the pvc in to. 

Here is a chicken drinking from it.  You are supposed to mount it so the chickens have to reach up to the nipples. It helps them waste less water.  But it seems like there is still quite a bit that gets wasted. 

Pontoon Playhouse

I wrote a blog post late last year about a pontoon boat we found in the woods after we bought our house that I decided to make a playhouse out of.  We moved it during the Thanksgiving holiday last year using a tractor and truck as evidenced in this video. I finally got around to working on it this spring and finished it prior to 4th on the Farm this year which was my goal.  I still have a few things I want to add but the main part of it is done.  I am planning to make an upper deck lookout when the girls get a little older and I would like to add some musical components. 

I am pretty happy with how it turned out and it seems to be a big hit with our girls and all the other kids that have come to our house. It is funny how all this worked out with having a random pontoon boat and repurposing it into a playhouse. Several years ago, before we moved here, I had told Margo I really wanted to build our kids an interesting playground out of recycled stuff. I didn't want just a normal kit playground you buy at the store but wanted them to have something really cool, interesting, and almost artsy. Part of this idea stemmed from spending time at City Museum in St. Louis (which is one of the coolest places I have ever been) and from an episode of American Pickers where a guy had made a really cool building from recycled junk. I wanted my kids to have the coolest playset around. Fast forward a few years and I think I came pretty close. Even though it is not exactly what I had in mind when I originally thought of what a recycled/repurposed playset would be, it is really interesting and cool (not sure about artsy).

Here it is in the woods where we found it

Here it is getting put in place for being a playset.

This is after I had dismantled it and was working on removing the old decking.

This is after adding new decking and putting it back together. I framed the enclosed area, added windows, and was working on putting together the enclosed part and the swing arm. 

Here it is finished

Front view

Back and other side view.  It has two slides.

Deck view. I got the girls a couple adirondack chairs and built them a table and stools for inside.

Here are the girls enjoying the swings. Esther has recently learned to do flips on the trapeze bar. 

Enjoying the old boat swivel chairs I attached to the front.  

Kids enjoying it during 4th on the Farm

More 4th on the Farm fun.