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Friday, January 7, 2011

Cattle panel shelters

This weather has been incredible and we've been working on getting garden plots ready, getting supplies for temporary greenhouses and building shelters.  We have a lot of glass won at an auction for "permanent" greenhouses, but for now we need to keep it simple and quick to be ready to get back to house building, but be ready for seed starting at the same time. 

As soon as it's not freezing at night, we'll be able to lay the first course of blocks for Judy's house in mortar  - which can't freeze at night.  There are things you can do to keep the mortar from freezing, but there is other important work to do to, so we'll just wait a couple of weeks and get back to it.  Everything is square and the "dry run" row of blocks looks good.

We took cattle panels and tarps to build a shelter over the door at the RV and used the same method to build a small shelter for some equipment.  We tied the cattle panels to the luggage rack and arched it over the door/ fridge/ battery box area.  Rebar ties were used to tie the tarp to the cattle panels.  So far that is working well.  When it's windy out though, the metal of the rebar ties sliding across the metal of the tarp rivets grating the metal of the cattle panels is quite the noise!  Something is going on with my camera besides it no longer zooming and the photo of the new awning is gone.



We'll do the same basic thing, except with carpenters plastic, for a temporary greenhouse till the one of glass can be built.  

Here is the little equipment shelter we built today though.  The way it's built, we can pull the garden tractor and trailer straight in, then pull straight out.


9 comments:

Marqueta (Mar-kee-ta) G. said...

Dear Jamie,

What a nifty idea, the cattle panels and plastic! I'll have to borrow it when we get where we can set up a greenhouse.

It looks like things are coming along really well; spring will be here before you know it!

Love,

Marqueta

Unknown said...

Thanks Marqueta! As soon as the green houses are up, I'll take a photo. Everything is laid out at the site, but with the warmer weather during the day I was trying to get posts in the ground for the waddle fence. Got about 8 in yesterday, but today the ground is frozen.

Juli said...

How wonderful everything looks! you guys have come so far and I look forward to seeing where your journey heads :)

Unknown said...

How nice and beautifully you made it.i saw many more cattle panels here and i hope you will also like them.i really shocked to see that how beautifully people made panels.

Unknown said...

How nice and beautifully you made it.i saw many more cattle panels here and i hope you will also like them.i really shocked to see that how beautifully people made panels.

Unknown said...

I overlap the gate with the existing fence and use carabiners or other spring latches to hold it closed. Chicken coops
It doesn't get much simpler than this.

Unknown said...

I think I may add cattle panel trellises with a vine (maybe green beans or gourds) to help shade this wall from the western sun. Cattle panels

John Mark said...

I use the hog panels with 4x4 squares, still 4 x 16. I'm using them as lattice inserted into wood and galvanized tin fencing. When I lived in San Antonio, Gardenwille used to sell tomato cages very similar to yours, except the edge squares were cut in half and rounded into a circle and each panels circles were brought together with a 18 guage wire going down the center of the side circles to hold together.cattle panels I bought for of them and have had them for years and are still in great shape. They fold into one piece for storage.

John Mark said...

I use the hog panels with 4x4 squares, still 4 x 16. I'm using them as lattice inserted into wood and galvanized tin fencing. When I lived in San Antonio, Gardenwille used to sell tomato cages very similar to yours, except the edge squares were cut in half and rounded into a circle and each panels circles were brought together with a 18 guage wire going down the center of the side circles to hold together.cattle panels I bought for of them and have had them for years and are still in great shape. They fold into one piece for storage.