How'd it go today?

Chickens seem cool to have. I was pretty serious about getting some a few years ago, but decided the work involved outweighed the benefit. Just me here, so it's hard to justify caring for birds for a few "free" eggs.
 
I laid out some piles and an abutment footer Friday. When I staked to one of the steps, I was about 6' off. I go up to check the plans, and I busted the comps by about that much. I fixed it quick, but it's been in the back of my head since then. I'm not sure how I got the pile in the right place while screwing up the footer.

I brought the plans and calc home to check everything over, cause it ain't wrong til it's built. Everything looks good now with my corrected comps. I still don't know how the discrepancy came in, and I somehow got part of the project right that depended on the part I screwed up, but whatever; I'll take it. As much as I hate nagging issues, it seems like they're seldom the problem. The problems happen when I think everything went perfectly, but I get a call later saying "Something doesn't look right out here" :^O :^D

edit:
I see how it got screwed up. The geometric drawing is different from the plan view, which is different from the foundation drawing :^S Back to the prints to see if I can figure out which one is actually correct...
 
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lxskllr said:
Chickens seem cool to have. I was pretty serious about getting some a few years ago, but decided the work involved outweighed the benefit. Just me here, so it's hard to justify caring for birds for a few "free" eggs.
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From what I've seen, it can be more than a few "free" eggs. Lots of people give away or sell their excess. Just a few chickens can produce a lot of eggs in the right conditions.

And they will eat the ants and borers off your firewood.
 
In addition to the disappearance of the current egg market (surely something Big Egg wants to prevent from happening), it's been said that if everyone owned chickens, some of our waste and landfill problems could be fixed exceptionally quickly since everyone would feed scraps and much of their "waste byproduct" to their chickens. They will evidently eat just about anything.

I think I heard this last fact second hand somewhere as a part of something that was talked about frequently on Joe Rogan's podcast, so I don't personally know how credible the info is. However, it makes sense, and there are enough real benefits to the first part to make owning chickens worthwhile. They apparently lay tons of eggs and they are easy to raise and maintain. I've heard some rumors that they carry a lot of diseases. That is likely unfounded so long as they are vaccinated and whatnot.

@SeanKroll good job recycling something that looks perfectly useful and well made at that. It looks like they've even run some electrical through it already. Good use for the Skidsteer.
 
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Chickens and pigs are high in feed to food conversion as they pretty much eat about all your food waste. Chickens also keep your insect population down some. They will also decimate a vegetable garden toot sweet if they can get in to it.
 
I’ll break down eventually and get chickens. We do go through about 4 dozen eggs a week. For now I’ll keep supporting the Mennonite family up the road. I think they’re catching up with inflation now. $3 a dozen. It’s was $2.50 for the last five years😆.
 
Bioassay said:
In addition to the disappearance of the current egg market (surely something Big Egg wants to prevent from happening), it's been said that if everyone owned chickens, some of our waste and landfill problems could be fixed exceptionally quickly since everyone would feed scraps and much of their "waste byproduct" to their chickens. They will evidently eat just about anything.

I think I heard this last fact second hand somewhere as a part of something that was talked about frequently on Joe Rogan's podcast, so I don't personally know how credible the info is. However, it makes sense, and there are enough real benefits to the first part to make owning chickens worthwhile. They apparently lay tons of eggs and they are easy to raise and maintain. I've heard some rumors that they carry a lot of diseases. That is likely unfounded so long as they are vaccinated and whatnot.

@SeanKroll good job recycling something that looks perfectly useful and well made at that. It looks like they've even run some electrical through it already. Good use for the Skidsteer.
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I think they eat grass and bugs. You can grow a patch of chicken greens for them to eat. Make sure they can't get to their eggs, or they will eat those too. I think they either naturally, or readily carry salmonella, so wash well and cook well. Their poop is a powerful plant fertilizer. Kinda sounds like big business based on convenience really screwed a lot of people over since it makes us dependent on so much more, makes society less robust to disasters, takes away natural food recycling, ect. But, how do they tax your personal farm/garden if you spent you time doing that rather than busting your butt earning paper?
 
The more they graze, the better your eggs will be. The more light and warmth they get, the more they lay. Along with good nutrition.
Feed prices are way up and you want to consider making your own feed if possible. We had to take our chickens off the store bought feed recent to get any eggs. And we were just supplementing.
 
CurSedVoyce said:
The more they graze, the better your eggs will be. The more light and warmth they get, the more they lay. Along with good nutrition.
Feed prices are way up and you want to consider making your own feed if possible. We had to take our chickens off the store bought feed recent to get any eggs. And we were just supplementing.
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I heard that from somewhere, twitter I think. It's like they are poisoning the feed. I've had bad luck with potting soil last year. Stuff just didn't want to grow.

Chicken greens feed seed, they have good prices:
www.groworganic.com

Peaceful Valley Omega-3 Chicken Forage Blend – Grow Organic

Omega-3 fatty acids from chicken eggs are an important component of a healthy diet. This cover crop blend is planted for chicken forage to achieve high Omega-3.
www.groworganic.com www.groworganic.com

And you can always grow heavy seed producing plants that they might like like giant sunflowers or something.

I think chickens also like a tub of wood ash for bathing/pest control or something like that. You can also put a bit of wood ash into their feed for a calcium boost.
 
We have burn piles of ash they play in.
Garden scraps are cycled to them as well.
Winter is hardest on them. We have party lights on a timer for them and supplement more then. They have our cow, horse, pig, goat and rabbit shat to pick at as well.
 
Went to the oak blow down bucking job today. Rob and I put in 6 hours. Almost all the oak and (3) 24” poplars (which the oak knocked over) are bucked to firewood lengths. No sense bucking the sections over 4’ dia as the homeowner won’t be able to move it to split it. We’ll attack a massive beech blowdown next.

Nice to spend a day in the woods with the saws while being very close to home.
 
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Treeaddict said:
No sense bucking the sections over 4’ dia as the homeowner won’t be able to move it to split it.
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That's why you noodle the 4' rounds in to manageable sized chunks. A 4' round has 4x the wood of a 2' round, and almost 2x the wood of a 3' round. Lots of wasted firewood, if the customer would pay you to dice it up. That's a good job for a 90cc saw and a short bar. I did it to a 50" dia log I had to load by hand. 42" bar to buck it, then 20" bar to dice it up into 40lb chunks.
 
Short, wide chunks are easier to split, with cross cutting instead of noodling. Bang them with an ax or maul and they're split. Funky, unconventional shapes.

Fwiw

Ymmv
 
Got my transitional / short-term housing set up for new/ traveling employee at a basic level in my shop, with access to a full bath and laundry.

Electric heater, camp stove, coffee maker, recliner and bed. Toaster oven needs a cleaning.

I'll look for a mini-fridge, microwave and sink and set up a covered kitchen in another part of the shop with a counter top and cabinets.

Housing can be difficult to find, locally, from afar. Having a place for a person to land should help.

IMO, the PNW is a work-cation destination.

A guy was going to sleep in his truck bed a couple nights, but now, a few creature comforts. 20230212_184159.jpg
 
It occurred to me yesterday that none of the smoke detectors were going off when we got home and found the house filled with smoke.

They all had good batteries...but didn't alarm.

We are replacing all of them. None of them had an end of life alarm.

Some were 15 years old. They would alarm if you hit the test button.
 
Holey moley that first sentence is an understatement Jim!
What was the source of the smoke?
 
Nutball said:
That's why you noodle the 4' rounds in to manageable sized chunks. A 4' round has 4x the wood of a 2' round, and almost 2x the wood of a 3' round. Lots of wasted firewood, if the customer would pay you to dice it up. That's a good job for a 90cc saw and a short bar. I did it to a 50" dia log I had to load by hand. 42" bar to buck it, then 20" bar to dice it up into 40lb chunks.
Click to expand...
I’ve done that a few times to get a tree off the property. The 395 with a 28” is a beast. I’ll bring it up to him. It will be a lot of bull ropes, digging, and 4x4 action but if he’s willing to pay…..
 
Finished work early, and did some milling. I really dislike milling, but I'm getting a routine down, so it's halfway smooth, but still tedious.

IMG_20230213_151539494.jpg

Boss had our tree company client give an estimate a week or so ago. He said if I had bucked it to 8.5' he could have taken it to the mill. I did 8'. Who knew someone would take white pine!? Well, now I know. I bucked it for my use, but in the future I'll do 8.5' just in case.
 
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