Little Red Hen

Our Little Red Hen’s Hiding Spot

Suz and I have a number of hens and we keep a reasonable eye on them. So, we’d had the full head count earlier in the day as we did yard work and then, about an hour later, we were a hen short! Our smallest red hen was missing.

Well, we did a complete yard search, a search of our yard and the neighbors, and then one of the entire neighborhood. No little red hen. So we’d resigned ourselves to wait.

As evening was approaching I wanted to use the light to see if I could find any clues about what might have happened to her. Maybe something jumped the fence and nabbed her; maybe a hawk strike. Out to Chickenville I strode and found no clues.

On the way back I walked more closely to the fence line and found her nestled inside some pampas grass. We figured she was due to start laying and this was her first attempt at finding a spot. As I picked her up to deposit her in a nestbox, we got a surprised.

See the video for the surprise.

Notes from after building the shelving unit (already!)

OK, admission time. And I don’t mean letting someone in … I mean letting something out: such as letting the cat out of the bag. I had posted my last note including a description of an “easy to build” shelving unit, but I hadn’t actually built it when I wrote the notes. I’d only sketched it up on SketchUp. I sit here now, aching back, ripped up fingers, and my frustration abating and feel I need to come clean on building that unit. I learned enough and made more than a couple mistakes so, I feel it only fair that I lay it all out there … not wave my hands glibly and proclaim that you could follow those instructions and get a “nice, sturdy set of shelves”.

Sturdy my tukas!

When I drew up the plans for those shelves, I had 3/4” plywood in mind for the job. And, basing it off some 8’ tall units I’d made previously, I was thinking about cabinet-grade plywood … not some void-pocked D-grade sheeting. But, when I was at the store and costed out the project at $60-$90 for 3/4” material or under $25 for the stuff I used, I got the cheap stuff and reworked my project plans.

However, I’d never worked with chipboard (OSB) before and just assumed it would work about the same.

I’ll say it simply and clearly and then move on: I’m an idiot.

OSB and cabinet-grade plywood do not work the same, do not handle the same, and do not give you the same quality and integrity of a finished product. I’m sure some of that is because I went to 1/2” instead of 3/4”, but while using a jigsaw to cut the slots (more on this later), it was like running a hot knife through butter, driving pins through it was a joke, and nailing was hit-and-miss (no pun intended). OSB is a porous material so it just ate the glue, it was hard to clamp up (bent like a wet noodle), and if I hadn’t nestled it against two walls it would be an unstable structure to say the least. I’m even regretting that I didn’t fasten it to the walls!

But, it was super easy to work with, very easy to cut, and it was a fraction of the price I’d have paid for the plywood. And yet, beware: following the plans from the prior post will not give you a “sturdy” shelving unit; it will give you a passable, light-duty set of shelves.