Matthew

Jun 20 2008

A Completed Chicken Plucker and a few Other Thoughts

It’s quite chilly this morning. We open the windows last night because it’s supposed to get up close to 80 degrees today but as I sit here at the computer my fingers are so cold (and slightly numb) that I’m having a hard time typing. Yesterday I could see my breath in the morning. I’ve had to dig out the flannel shirts and sweat shirts again. (‘Course if it was winter I’d be wearing a short sleeved t-shirt–it’s only getting down in the low fifty’s or high forty’s!)

The Amazing and Famous Plucker Project
Well I finally finished it. It’s been a kinda long process, I started gathering parts in February, but I took a few breaks too (some longer than others!) –to help some friends with lambing, to wait for more parts to come and to work on other things. However The Whizbang Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker is now complete and ready to try out (I even added a couple of up-grades–one was in the plan book and one I came up with my self.) And so without further ado…(drum roll please)…here’s a picture:

As y’all can see, it’s quite nice, if I do say so myself! You can also see that I added the “Mobile Whizbang” option. Here it is in action:

That blue plastic tub was just the right size to cover up the motor (which must weigh about 50 lb!) This is a sideways picture of the bottom pulley’s etc. Right now I have the wrong idler pulley on there-it’s a v-grove and I need to replace it with a flat one, but it works….

And now for my own innovation…..see if ya can guess what it is from this picture:

Here’s another clue….

What you are looking at is….A rigged up spray ring (so ya don’t have to stand there with the hose for the ten or fifteen seconds it takes to pluck a couple of birds–just flip the lever! Who has time to stand around and wait for ten whole seconds!?! ;-) )

What I did is took an old hose (hard rubbery plasticy stuff) and hooked to the 1/2″ ball valve. Then I mounted the ball valve to the plucker frame with plumber’s strap, and the hose to the plucker tub with the ever handy zip ties. Finally, I cut little one inch slits in the hose so that is sprays like this:

And then when you flip the power switch as I’m doing in the above picture…

I think that the thing might take a few feathers off! I can hardly wait till the broilers are ready now:

There they are in the Joel Salatin style chicken tractor. It has three doors–two on the front and one big one on the back which is covered with a PVC roofing material. The pen is fairly light–without the doors on I can stand in the middle and pick it right up and carry it. On the ground though, it drags a lot because of the width (digs into the ground)…so I cobbled up a dolly for it:

It’s made out of an old push lawn mower and a couple of boards. Make it do or do with out! I basically just took the handle and bolted the wheels to it. (that did end up needing some reinforcing to keep the wheel straight–weld a piece of pipe between ’em) Then I took that pesky kill switch handle thingy, and used it to hold the board at the proper angle.

I’ve also been working on some butchering tables and such (with a lot of help from the gentleman from church that gives me lumbar). I think that it’s safe to say that I’m the only one in the county with furniture grade butchering tables! This one holds two (out of three) pieces of slate counter top that another friend gave me. It’s about six feet long. Made out of planned ash boards. [He doesn’t do plugging and touch sanding though… :(

Here’s a few other things:

That would be the Whizbang Garden cart pieces in the bushes, and the two height (sitting or standing) single stand, and the fully adjustable killing cone stand. (plus a few odds and ends!) Here’s a close up of the singe stand:

And in these two you can see how the cone stand adjustment works:

The guy helping me does very poor work as you can see! (insert extreme sarcasm into that last sentence if ya haven’t already) He doesn’t have any tools either. For instance the back of the single stand are held together in part by two biscuits (wooden kind–ya wouldn’t want to eat ’em!) which were cut out with a nifty little biscuit cutter outer jobber thing. I’m very pleased with how the stuff turned out.

He also has an old cast iron double sink with drain board that he is going to give me. (Did I mention that he’s pretty generous?) Then I’ll just need to figure out how to rig up the foot operated water switch….

Well I’m out of time this morning. I get to go help worm sheep today :-)

Until next time,

May He who is able to keep you from falling make your way straight, and rescue you from all ungodliness.

Matthew

Tags: Butchering Tables, Chicks, Matthew, Plucker

2 comments

Jun 11 2008

Stormy Weather and Thoughts on Living Without Power

Posted by Matthew

All I did was water the tomatoes a little bit.

They were getting a little bit dry, and while I knew that if I watered them it would rain–Murphy’s Law (works that same way when you cut a bunch of hay down!) — but I didn’t anticipate correctly what would actually happen; but we did need the moisture….There were several major storms that blew through the mid-west after that…Storms which dumped roughly 5 1/2 inches of water in our area in the course of three or four days. I just gave the poor plants a little drink….There were only five or six of them….

Some people we know lost power some time on Friday–the first day of the bad storms. There were even some possible tornadoes reported. They actually only live three and a half miles from us–on what would be our same road–if only the road went through.

Our worst storm was on Saturday night. Black clouds racing ominously towards us. Lighting streaking across the sky. Thunder rumbling menacingly. Then the rain started. Almost gently at first, belying the true force of the storm. But before too long, the water started coming down in sheets. It would let up only a little, and then pour down with even more ferocity.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that my poor little boiler chicks only had a few layers of plastic tarp between them and the storm and drenching rain. This particular tarp was not supported all that well, thus easily acting as a catch water. With the rain falling at a rate that sometimes exceeded an inch an hour, the tarp caught a lot of water. Dad went out with me at about eleven before he went to bed and helped me bale the water off and stretch the tarp tight again. After that he went to bed but I stayed up a while longer (quite a while longer actually…) spinning (on Mom’s new wheel–very nice, fun to use, etc…) and watching the radar on the TV. Jonathan was up too, but Mom had already gone to bed. Well Jonathan went to bed about a quarter to twelve, but I was waiting until the storm let up some to go out and bale the chickens off again….It did slack off down to a drizzle finally about twelve thirty. There were fifteen and twenty gallon pools on top of the tarp. After that I went straight to bed. It was one o’clock. There was another storm that came through at three–it woke me up even though Jonathan had the shades drawn and the A/C running. I didn’t get up though. Then the next morning, being Sunday and all, I had to get up fairly early to do the chicken chores and then take a shower etc….. I think I got all of about four and a half hours of sleep that night. (Can’t do that on a regular basis.) The edge of the tarp had fallen inside of the pen, and drained a bunch of water in there but the chicks all seem to stay fairly dry somehow.

Sunday afternoon Mom and Dad had to go to an open house, and while they were gone the storms rolled in again. They didn’t seem that bad to me, but they caused our power to go out. Mom said that a spruce tree blew over right on the edge of town and blocked both south bound lanes of the main road. It was quite a while before they got home. But they made it safely. I was puttering around in the garage when the power outage happened–had just called the dog in and shut the door, when I looked up and noticed that the lights weren’t on any more. So we went in the house and I started spinning again. I got three bobbins spun and plied into yarn in 24 hours–and I’m not that fast, so you can tell that I spent a lot of time at it!

We were now without power, but not without resources allowing us to cope quite well. We had our usual grilled cheese sandwiches (cooked on the burner on the gas grill) and got out the kerosene lamps. We called in to the power company, and their automated service said that they expected the power to be restored on Wednesday at eleven pm. Now that we knew that it was likely to be a while our biggest concern was keeping the freezer cold, and getting enough water. We have roughly 14,000 gallons in the swimming pool, but that is treated with bleach to kill the algae–so it’s not drinkable. Fortunately, there is an artesian well just around the corner about two and a half miles away. So I took a 55 gallon drum over there to get water for the chickens to drink. I also took some five gallon buckets to fill the barrel with,and one gallon pitchers for drinking water.

It took quite a while fill the barrel, but I didn’t want to have to do it again. There were several people from church that came to get water while I was there. I had just gone around Sunday afternoon and dumped most of the containers full of rain water so the mosquitoes had fewer breeding grounds, so we had to go to get water. If we had known that we were going to lose power, we could have saved the 100 gallons that I baled off of the chicks tarp. But we obviously didn’t know…

While we were without power we used a lot less water, got by with less light and watched no TV (not that we watch all that much anyway–usually just on Sunday nights while we eat our grilled cheese sandwiches). It made me think. It made me think about how dependent we are on “conveniences.” It kinda seems to me that perhaps we shouldn’t be rely so heavily on conveniences. After all aren’t they just supposed to be just that–conveniences, not necessities?

If worst came to worst, how long could we last? No stove to cook on, with a gas stove you’d have a little longer–but the gas won’t last forever; no good way to keep perishable food stored; no accessible supply of good water available close at hand….

Lets see how that adds up: No water, not much food, and no way to cook it. I think we’d be in BIG trouble.

Off-grid, self-sustainable, subsistence-oriented farming is sounding better and better….

But now the power is back on (over 24 hours early!) and we are able to resume our regular lives. It’s almost too bad that it came back on early…Oh, well, summer’s not over yet, there will be more storms, more power outages (probably, anyway) and more reminders not to be so dependent on conveniences.

‘Till next time,

Matthew

Tags: Matthew, Storms, Sustainable Living

1 comment

May 25 2008

Chicken Tractors, Whizbang Adventures and Growth in the Garden

Posted by Matthew

Well it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but as always seems to happen in the spring, we’ve somehow become rather busy….not sure how that happens, however it appears to be a common affliction; especially among the more rural (agrarian) segment of the population.

[Note: To aid in organization I am going to insert headers (of sorts) in to this post–hope it’s not too distracting :-) ]

Chicken Tractors (and chicks too)

Some time back I ordered the first batch of broiler chicks and they arrived on Monday May 19th. Before they arrived I thought I’d better have a place for them to live, and so, after a trip to my “lumber yard” (which is actually a pole barn belonging to a very generous gentleman from church who has a little portable sawmill) I started putting a pen together based on Mr. Joel Salatin’s. Here are a few pictures that Jonathan took for me:

Here you can see the frame is complete, the basswood siding (sure beats the price of steel!) is up, and I’ve got one of the front doors covered with chicken wire.

The sheep farmer that I was helping several weeks ago, is also cleaning out a barn for his cousin, and has given me a few things from there. Among them is chicken wire. I was able to stretch one piece of 4′ wire to cover each front door. There’s a certain technique to it, but it worked out quite well. I secured the wire with one inch dry wall screws driven in at an angle.

Here’s another shot of the lovely basswood siding. It started out 1″ thick, and then we planed it down to about 1/2″–that really made the colors stand out. It’s quite pretty I think.

Here it is temporarily installed behind the garage (for brooding purposes)

This is the great brooder–repaired after the great smoldering (near fire) of ’08, not too much worse for the wear. The dark stuff on to of the plywood is dirt. For insulation. Less flammable than wood shavings. ‘Nuff said.

And here’s the little peepers settling in for the night:

The other chickens are doing quite well–eating, growing, and somehow getting out occasionally. The latter adds some spice to life! We at least have Baxter–the super duper chicken dog. (He has helped me catch a chicken on two separate occasions now–both involved the same not-so-smart, soon-to-be-in-the-freezer rooster! He escaped twice within two or three hours. Just another month or so and the roosters will be the first to try out the Whizbang plucker. Except for the two Buff Orpingtons–I think…)

Which leads me to my next topic….

Whizbang Adventures

I finally started on the ‘tub-style mechanical chicken plucker’! The same trip for boards for the chicken tractor, I also got enough lumber for the plucker. I’d purchased the hardware back in February, and ordered parts from Mr. Kimball (I wrote about it here) and then got busy. (helping with lambing and other various and sundry things….) My aunt was able to find me a food grade barrel and so now I’m in business. Sort of….

The plans (as laid out in “Anyone Can Build A Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker”) are quite easy to follow (just make sure to read the entire segment about what your doing before you start in on it–just like any good recipe, for ,oh, say, chocolate chip cookies…) I got the frame whipped out and the barrel cut out in one afternoon (as I recall), and by the time I quit for the night, I had pulled fingers and got the feather plate and shaft assembly bolted together. Then I ran out of parts…I forgot to order the pillow block bearings. I also had to order the driven pulley since they’re not available locally. Someone had sent through a website on the yahoo Whizbang plucker group–SurplusCenter.com They have really great stuff–really cheap. Even cheaper that McMaster/Carr. I found some great tires that I ordered–10″ solid rubber with steel hubs and traction tread for only $6.95 each. They come in right and left wheels. I got them to mount wheels on the plucker, because I thought that it was hard enough to pick up and carry around without the feather plate, motor, pulleys and tub –the wheels should make it quite easy to wheel around. (there’s also mention of wheels in the plan book) So then one day I stained it and now it looks like this:

In this picture you can see the 3/4″ rod stock I got for axles: two 3′ pieces. One for the plucker, and one for the Whizbang Garden Cart!

Here’s a photo documenting the mess :-) That means progress!

Dad and I went to the big consignment sale the first part of this month. I’ve gone for several years, and every year it keeps getting bigger and bigger. That’s where I bought the blue plastic barrels in the background. They make the best movable work tables! Just the right height. I also got three steel barrels, a potato planter (it’s really nifty gadget), and a couple of buckets of assorted fencing junk. Dad got a neat little table top drill press (one that you mount a electric drill in) and we also bought 13 boxes of canning jars! 24 1/2gal and 9 boxes of quarts. (now we just need a pressure canner) Not a bad haul. It filled the truck right up. (you’ll notice we mostly bought containers!)

Any way, back to the plucker…

My Uncle gave me a motor:

A big old green beast!

I also have some Ideas for a semi-portable butchering station which involves this old slate counter top that another friend gave me….

There’s three pieces, and I think that if I put two on one side of an old deep porcelain sink that I can get for free, it should work pretty slick….

Well on to….

Growth in the Garden

The onions are coming along nicely, and the tomatoes are starting to take off again after I transplanted them into the hoop house. One kind of peas are coming up, and we had some fresh lettuce on our hamburgers the other night. The radishes are coming along nicely in two waves, as is the lettuce, and the beans in the hoop house are up two or three inches. Here’s a look into the hoop house:

And these are the onions:

Another gentleman from church (the one I cut wood with) is letting us put a big garden in over at his house. The one garden is about 180′ long by 80′ wide. We can also use part of the spot where is regular garden is. He’s very generous. In fact a lot of people are being very generous to us/me. I feel that God it really blessing me through them.

And speaking of blessings, Mr. Shropshire over at Promised Land has recently posted a really great essay on a vital topic. I would encourage you to read and dwell on it, if you have not already. (read the comments too–there’s another whole post down there)

Well that’s all for now….

Until next time–May He who is able to do more that we can ever imagine bless you and yours, grant your desires and shelter you under his wings.

Matthew

Tags: Miscellaneous

3 comments

A Completed Chicken Plucker and a few Other Thoughts

Stormy Weather and Thoughts on Living Without Power

Chicken Tractors, Whizbang Adventures and Growth in the Garden

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A Completed Chicken Plucker and a few Other Thoughts

Stormy Weather and Thoughts on Living Without Power

Chicken Tractors, Whizbang Adventures and Growth in the Garden

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