coop

Life on a Farm

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ 5 Comments

I KIMG0034haven’t posted in several days because my parents were in town. We ate a lot, laughed a lot, and picked up chickens. From top to bottom, I call them Red, Red, and Red.  The gentleman at Quality Feed selected these chickens specifically for me! From observations thus far, I think he was picking out the dumb ones that more refined clientele might refuse. They did impress me by being nestled in the coop when I arrived home from dinner. They get points for that. My real disappointment is that the ETA for eggs is several months from now.

KIMG0041The other “farmy” issues this weekend related to tree branches and cats.

Most of the branches shown on the left came crashing down this morning. I’m surprised because they look completely healthy. Could it be due to the weight of the pecans growing on them? I find that kind of hard to believe, but it is currently my only explanation.

The cat issues had to do with the youngest two. They’ve developed new affinity for climbing UP, but theyKIMG0033 lack any interest in climbing DOWN. This has become a daily occurrence. You have to look closely, but you can see them to the right.

I also finally started building a fire pit from river rocks. I will report back on that once I finish and know if it is a success or failure. It has been one of my worst guesstimates so far. I am 400 lbs into concrete and mortar, and it is still tiny. I don’t think I am halfway there.

Not Enough Power

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ 2 Comments

So no luck with the chicken coop.  The solar panel I was using was labeled as 5 Watts. However, it only put out about 20 mA (.24 Watts) in direct sunlight. That wasn’t even enough to run the power supply.  I assumed that it would put out more than that in the shade. I guess I need to buy a better panel.  More money, and I don’t even have any chickens yet.

 

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On another note, I’ve been struggling with sorting a Buick Grand National for some time now. Today, I figured out that the previous owner had installed an adjustable boost actuator at over 20 psi.  I never noticed how high it was set because I had a big crack in one of the headers. I welded that up last week, and it started blowing off vacuum/boost lines. I guess someone’s solution to low boost was to crank on the actuator rod rather than fixing the problem. I used my air compressor and a pressure regulator to open the waste gate (pictured), and it didn’t fully open until almost 25 psi!  I cranked it back down, and I have a Manual Boost Controller on order.  I can’t wait!  Once I get it tuned back down and running predictably, I can start cranking it back up and spinning the tires!

1st Post: Chicken Tractor

~ joelshaw@sbcglobal.net ~ 1 Comment

This is my first post,  and I do not know exactly how this will show up. We will see.

So I decided I want some chickens. I don’t like being up early in the morning to letKIMG0019 them out or being home early at night to lock them up,  so I decided to automate the opening and closing mechanism. It has turned out to be more of a pain than I predicted, but tonight is the inaugural run. I programmed it to close 1 hour after sundown, so we will see if it works in about 39 minutes. Anyway, here is a picture of the haphazard wiring from today. If it works, I will try to get some pullets this weekend.

 

With all of the problems I’ve had with this, I’m not putting much faith in it.  Perhaps sourcing ebay components from China wasn’t the best idea.