Wednesday 21 October 2015

Can You Dig It? - The Turkey Shed. Part: The First.

Digging a Hole
Levelling the ground and Making Some Space

Our idea this year was to raise our own turkeys for Christmas, well this has failed.

We were very keen on the idea and planned to take on around six little ones and raise for friends and family for Christmas time. Our first step was to get a shed. So I put up a request on our local Freegle page, basically "Shed, please."

I wasn't expecting much. Not many people happen to have a shed lying around that they just want to give away. After a couple of weeks I decided that I'd have to start looking at prices for secondhand sheds. And that was when the email arrived. Someone had an old 6x8 shed (formally used for chickens) that he'd dismantled ready to chuck out, and never got round to it. It was ours if we wanted it.

Did we ever!

The shed was in great condition. The roof needed refelting but beyond that there was nothing else that a lick of paint couldn't fix! We loaded it up.

The next step however was getting the position for the shed prepared. We dawdled. And procrastinated. And ummed. And errrred. And took too long, so we missed the deadline for getting the turkey chicks for this year. But with the shed leaning up against a barn wall we still had to get it erected, there's no way it would survive the winter as it is.

Digging
Flattening Out the Ground

So we decided to get stuck in. The position we have chosen is at the bottom of a slight slope and the flat area is just too small for the shed.... So bring in the big guns...

We had to clear the area and flatten it as much as we could so the shed will stand sensibly. We also intend to put in some, cemented in, posts to fix it too. We get some major wind on top of our hill and we don't want this thing drifting away!

Farm Guy got a great chance to play with a big new toy, so he was happy! Although we did have to take down a fence in order to get the digger in!

We followed our land "flattening" with the digging of some post holes. Once these were dug out we used post cement and water carried in a couple of our thousands of plastic bottles (watch this space for more on those). Soon the corner posts were in and it was just a case of waiting for the cement to dry before we can put the walls on.

 

 

 

 

Picture of the Field
Our Newly Flattened Spot

 

3 comments:

  1. We did exactly the same thing with a typical 8x8 wooden garden shed - got it free but we had to disassemble and reassemble it by hand. I LOVE the new shed - don't know what I would do without it, but I did end up injuring my lower arm/wrist from the strain of moving the sections & now have to be extra careful about lifting heavy or awkward things. Wish we had had a new toy like yours to help out!

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  2. It's always exciting doing such a mammoth job...can't wait to see the finished shed!

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  3. It was so nice that you got a free shed. Sure a lot of work getting it up though. I hope you can get your turkeys next year! Nancy

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