Farm Progress: Farrowing Barn Improvements

The shed that we are converting to our farrowing barn has/had several issues that we wanted to address: two of the skylights had blown off, the electrical box and much of the wiring needed replaced and upgraded, many of the nails holding the roof metal down on the lean-to have worked up and the roof …

Farm Progress: Adding Outlets to an Existing Shed

We are converting an existing shed to our winter farrowing house.  This particular shed did have electricity to it and has lights, however, it only has a couple of outlets.   One of the upgrades needed is more outlets.  (During the winter, we use heat lamps to help keep the baby pigs warm.)  Since I …

Portable Automatic Waterer

Recently we set up an automatic waterer on a pallet so that it could be portable.  We don’t really want to put a lot of permanent infrastructure on this farm as we are just renting it, but we also like the convenience of automatic waterers for our livestock.  The waterer we used was a “new” …

DIY Inexpensive Livestock Waterer

One of the most important aspects of a farm or homestead is the livestock water system.   Perhaps it is cost prohibitive for you to install underground water lines and automatic waterers or perhaps you rent and would prefer to not be making infrastructure improvements for your landlord.  Whatever the reason to not install a permanent …

Building a Cabin: Our Construction Lesson

We are finally in our cabin!  Although there are a few things to finalize, for the most part we are finished (or at least quitting.) Building our cabin has been such a learning experience on so many different levels. I learned how to run wires to outlets and lights and then learned how to put …