Re-Use and Re-Purpose

Back when chickens were taking over the place, we had four chicken coops and each coop had its own chicken run.

Vince would drive T-posts into the ground every 12 – 14 feet, then in between those, he would drive a piece of rear into the ground and slip a piece of PVC pipe over that. We would use chicken wire for the fencing and then put some kind of landscape plastic or the plastic fencing they put up around construction sites over the top to keep the chickens from flying out. The run fencing was to keep chickens in and not so much to keep critters out but it served us well for 3 or 4 years.

Then we came to our senses, gave away a bunch of chickens and reduced our numbers so we only have one coop in use. It’s the coop in the orchard and since there’s an 8′ fence around the orchard, and plenty of “cover” for the chickens to run to get away from airborne predators, we no longer keep the chickens confined to a small fenced in run. They now run loose in the orchard, which is about 1-1/2 acres.

The runs were a bit unsightly but . . hardly any one comes back here so no one sees them but us. Vince wanted the T-posts for another project so he began taking down the run closest to the shop. 

This year, as we got ready to put up trellises for beans to climb, Vince thought about using the plastic fencing that he had taken down from the runs.

We had enough for 7 rows, 70′ long each for the beans.

We had enough for 3 rows, about 30′ each, for the snow peas.

He re-used the rebar and PVC pipe to make stakes for the 80 tomato plants.

It was nice to put all those materials to work on a project other than what they were originally set up for and it’s super nice to be getting rid of some of those not used chicken runs!