Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[chickengr]

I should make a shed for sheep. unfortunately I have to give up on some animals. feed and petrol went up and people still want live animals for free. I am getting 3 lambs soon. goats and sheep have plenty of free feed here (grass/bushes, etc.) and they are easier to look after. I will still keep chickens and ducks but not as many as I do now. I think I will not keep geese any more as it is not worth money and time. I feel very sorry about that but I have no choice. vietnammese pigs are leaving as well. I will keep only what I can feed. I also need more time for gardening.

 

[Molpet]

I should make a shed for sheep. unfortunately I have to give up on some animals. feed and petrol went up and people still want live animals for free. I am getting 3 lambs soon. goats and sheep have plenty of free feed here (grass/bushes, etc.) and they are easier to look after. I will still keep chickens and ducks but not as many as I do now. I think I will not keep geese any more as it is not worth money and time. I feel very sorry about that but I have no choice. vietnammese pigs are leaving as well. I will keep only what I can feed. I also need more time for gardening.

Yes I only keep/grow what I use anymore.

 

[gtaus]

I will keep only what I can feed. I also need more time for gardening.

Yes I only keep/grow what I use anymore.

The good thing about chickens, IMHO, is that they really don't take much time or effort to take care of. The fresh eggs are nice, but I get more value of my chicken run compost for gardening. But feed prices are going up again and I don't grow my own feed. We have been selling our excess eggs to cover the feed costs, and that helps. Not having to buy bags of compost at the big box store is where I really save money.

We have been talking about cutting back on the number of chickens I keep to just enough to cover our fresh egg needs for Dear Wife and myself. Maybe only 3 or 4 chickens in the near future.

We are both in our retirement years and have started downsizing just about every aspect of our lives. I am not so sure I like that, but we are no longer building for a future. That future is here, I guess.

On a more positive note, over the past ~5 years that I have had a backyard flock I have really changed a lot of the way we live. All our kitchen scraps and leftovers get fed to the chickens, almost all our paper products are shredded and used as deep bedding in the coop, the used deep bedding and just about everything organic from the property gets tossed in the chicken run for in place composting, the chicken run compost feeds my garden beds, the garden beds helps feed us, excess food and/or garden weeds get fed back to the chickens, etc... It's been a nice lifestyle change for us.

Most of my pallet projects have been building new raised garden beds because I have access to so much high-quality chicken run compost. Dear Wife has put in a new order for some more pallet wood flower planters this spring to replace our aging and falling apart half whiskey barrels. Even there, I use the chicken run compost in the planter soil mix. So much of what I currently do revolves around those chickens.

I hope to continue this lifestyle for more years, but this past winter I had some setbacks, so I understand the need or desire for cutting down on things. Just trying to live in the present and enjoy it. But I understand people wanting to, or needing to, cut back on obligations. Take care.

 

[Mads505]

Yeah, I only find them at our local Bobcat dealership. They get some equipment on special heavy duty long 2X4 pallets and I look specifically for the pallets that use those Torx Head screws. They are the easiest to disassemble with just a drill or impact wrench with the proper bit.

Every once in while I find special hardware like heavy duty lag screws with matching fender washers. I think they use them for tiedown straps...

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I have priced out some of those lag screws at about $1.00 each at our Fleet store. So, it's always a treat when I can find a pallet with 4, 6, or 8 sets of lag screws and fender washers.

Sometimes I salvage straps and ropes from their pallets. I guess it's just not worth their time to remove the hardware or tiedowns. But that's all to my benefit.

At any rate, if you have an industrial company where you live, you might be able to salvage some pallets like I do.

I'll have to look into that!