Fun With Blue Plastic Barrels

Have you noticed the big blue plastic barrels popping up everywhere? It seems like more and more products are being shipped in them these days. Much of what is packaged in plastic barrels now was once shipped in steel barrels. I guess that makes sense: the plastic barrels are lighter in weight and probably more durable than the old steel ones. So how come so many of them wind up for sale at swap meets and farm stores? It seems they are generally single-use containers; no deposit, no return.

I’m not complaining mind you. The fact that they are so readily available is a boon to me and many others who, like you perhaps, find myriad ways to re-use them while amusing ourselves. I used a 55-gallon unit as a rain barrel to catch and dispense water for a small flock of hens. My family went to a community festival last month where children were being transported in a train of modified blue barrels on wheels being pulled behind a lawn tractor. That was pretty cool and the grandkids thought I should get started on one of those for our place right away!

Recently, I used a 15-gallon blue barrel to construct a water fount to serve a flock of about 80 birds. I bought four 15-gallon barrels for a total of $10.00. In their previous life, these drums had contained syrup for a popular soft drink. Using a 1 inch spade bit, I drilled a hole about 3.5 inches above the bottom of the barrel. Into this hole I threaded the pipe threads of a salvaged brass fitting. The other end of the fitting is threaded with hose threads. I use a brass hose cap from an old soaker hose to cap the fitting when needed.

The next step in this project required finding a plastic tub with a diameter about 6 inches greater than the barrel. I considered cutting the bottom four or five inches off of a 55-gallon barrel for this but really didn’t want to “waste” a big barrel for that purpose. Fortunately, I found a plastic tub of that diameter and about 20 inches deep at a swap meet for 50 cents! I cut this tub off to create a pan just deep enough to submerge the brass fitting in when the smaller barrel is placed in it.

My Giant Fount was ready! I placed the 15-gallon drum in the tub, capped the brass fitting, removed the bung from the top of the barrel and filled it up. I replaced the bung in the barrel and removed the cap from the brass fitting. Water gushed out, splashing all over my boot tops. The water filled the pan and continued to flow over the top. Bummer! I tightened the bung down some more and the flow of water stopped.

That was a few weeks ago. The fount functions beautifully; it requires filling only about every third day. I have since made a “bung tool” to facilitate the tightening and removal of the bung. I am very pleased with how it has all turned out

An opossum in the chicken house

The calendar says yesterday was January 3, 2009, but the thermometer showed that the high was 73 degrees. Here where we live that is not normal. But sometimes not normal can seem pretty nice.

What a beautiful day we had! The sky was bright and clear most all day. True the wind blew hard but not too hard.

Our son-in-law brought two of our granddaughters out to the country to play. They rode in the wagon, swung on the swings, went down the slide, and marveled at how far the wind blew the soap bubbles their Daddy was making.

When I was putting the chicken feed I had just brought from town into the storage bin the little girls and their Daddy came out to see the chickens. They checked the nest boxes and found six fresh brown eggs. They clucked at the chickens inside the pen, the littlest girl toddling and the bigger girl running along the fence.

They stopped short when they saw the opossum.

One evening a couple weeks ago, I had been late getting out to close up the hen house. When I got out there the birds were all out in the run. That was weird so I knew something was wrong. Inside, in the back corner, sat Ms. Opossum enjoying a fresh egg. I dispatched her with my .22 and tossed her over the fence without ceremony. She landed in some tall grass. The birds spent that night out in the run, too spooked to go in the house. By the next evening they had forgotten about the intruder and settled on the roost as usual.

Well, I had pretty much forgotten about the dead critter; guess I figured something would have dragged it off. But no! There it was in all its grizzly splendor. Actually, it was well preserved as we had been having “regular” cold weather.

By this time, Grandma had joined us out at the chicken house. She quickly got the little girls away from the opossum and interested in something else. I went to the barn and got a shovel.

Of course, I dug the hole in which to plant the erstwhile chicken house raider in the chicken run. I was pleasantly surprised to find absolutely no frost in the ground. Not only was it not frozen, there were large wiggly earth worms living and working in the top eight inched of it.

The chicken run is part of the garden spot we have been using for many years except when we quit using it because of the deer. You can read about that in an earlier post. The ground is quite fertile so I would expect to find worms there in the warmer months. I was surprised to find them in January.

The take away point of this for gardeners is that ground left mostly bare in the winter months, like a chicken run, will warm more quickly than mulched ground. I’ll bet if I had tried to dig in other parts of the garden where there is still a thick cover of mulch, I would have found the ground frozen.

It sure is fun to live and learn in the country.