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10/30/2007: "Boxed In"

Faithful followers of the Living Green Farm Journal have no doubt had their patience tested... I haven't been able to get away to work on any farm projects in a while, and Channa is pretty busy with law school. We haven't been posting much lately, I know. I did have another focused trip recently, in which I successfully managed to get a battery enclosure built in the shed room.

The trip started off somewhat inauspiciously: it took the better part of a Sunday morning to load nearly every tool I own into the back of the truck. The lone exceptions were the router, the staple gun, and the table saw; the table saw would have been useful, but I didn't have the time to break it down for transport. Didn't need the router, though it turned out that I might have needed the staple gun if I had gotten as far as lining the box.

Then there was the two hours spent in the Albany Home Depot... if I could only accurately forecast all the materials for a project, and find a way to purchase them before-hand, I could pre-purchase on my way home from work near Portland and be miles ahead in time and stress. However, that wasn't even a remote option with the back of the truck stuffed with tools. I did manage to only have to make ONE trip to Home Depot, which is progress!

Luckily it was a sunny day, so I set up sawhorses in the north yard adjacent to the house and shed, ran my extension cords, got out my drills and screws, levels, measuring tools, carpenter's square, and got to work. I decided on an angled top, to discourage anyone from piling objects on top of the lid. The construction technique was simple: screw 2x2 furring strips to the walls, and fasten 3/8" plywood to them. By dusk I had everything but the lid in place; I cut the lid on the sawhorses by the light of an LED headlamp. Miraculously, the bevel cut to match the slope of the lid worked out right...

I could have gone home semi-triumphant at that point, but I was going to be too late for dinner anyway, so I went on to phase two of the project: installing the vent fan. I had mail-ordered an in-line 12 volt Zephyr vent fan to attach to the box; putting it in required cutting a hole in the shed wall for the 2" PVC ducting used by the fan, and then piping it down to the box. Getting this all lined up took another couple of hours, so that by the time I finally started packing up tools it was 9:30 pm. Nate pressed a couple of pumpkins, a good-sized box of Delicata squash, and an armload of sweet corn from Ed, our farm neighbor, into my hands. I tucked them into the few spaces in the truck not occupied by tools, and headed for I-5. The only food available in Albany after 10 pm is fast food, so I carefully consumed a burger and fries as I drove up to Portland.

The completed box project:


That was two weeks ago. Since then we've been enjoying the Delicata squash several times a week, the chickens have eaten their way through most of the sweet corn, and we've carved the pumpkins. Most of my free time (outside of family obligations, that is) has been focused on getting the henhouse for our city chickens completed. Of course, the henhouse is overdesigned. Over-built. Over budget. Over schedule. But nearing completion: I've got two coats of paint on it, and it just needs a little door tweaking before deployment in the backyard Even though it technically is not on the farm, I'll probably devote the next posting to describing the city chicken setup that we've created in Portland - I've tried to add some pretty innovative and nifty features to the chicken operation.