Experiments That Worked - Sort of

One of the things about small-scale, diversified farming is that you are always in the middle of change.  There are always new things and there are always experiments.  And many of those things are adjustments to what has gone before because the old methods are no longer sufficient for how things work at the farm at the present moment.

A perpetual project over the years at the Genuine Faux Farm has been poultry housing with safe access to quality pasture.  There were numerous projects where we, often along with other workers or volunteers, built a new shelter solution for the hens, or turkeys, or broiler chickens, or ducks.  

Often, these projects relied on repurposing raw materials already on the farm.  For example, the "portable" broiler shelter shown above was made of cattle panels that came with the farm when we bought it and lumber from a building that had come down.

We attached some handles on the base to lift and move these buildings, but opted to not put wheels on them for a number of reasons.  The end walls were shorter cattle panels that were covered with either tarp or chicken wire to keep birds in at night and predators out if they managed to get past the electric netting that circled the pasture area.

The initial goal was to provide us with something that two people could move periodically so the poultry could have a fresh areas to bed down regularly.  And, it worked.  Sort of.

If the day we moved the building was nice, things worked out just fine.  If it was a day where we had a couple of workers on the farm, it was even better - because four people moved it much easier than two.  But, if it was windy or the ground was wet, things could get a bit sketchy.

The beginning of the end for these (we made two) shelters serving as "frequently mobile" came after one of us slipped in a wet field and fell under the building.  While we avoided any serious injury, it was obvious that changes had to happen.

The end result is that these shelters stayed in place longer, often with straw bedding, waiting for the good days with extra help to move them.  And, of course, when it came time to move to a different part of the farm, we could use a hayrack to take it most of the distance.

These shelters worked well enough for us for several years until, as happens with such things, the base rotted out and the cover broke down.  But, by then, these were relegated as either emergency shelters or as a shade area for poultry during the warmer months.  We moved on to new, portable buildings with skids that we could move with the tractor - and only one person was needed to move these building every other day.

And that's one of the key parts of farming.  Seeking solutions and then improving on those solutions as you learn more or conditions change.