Thursday, September 23, 2010

jackie genius


We've been having some difficulty with remembering to close the chicken yard door after ourselves. We used to allow our 'girls' to roam free in the whole yard often. This relaxed attitude has fallen by the wayside with the arrival of Caleb and his adoration of the flavour of chicken feces....and then his desire to wipe his pink drippy tongue over our faces, hands or bare toes.
I had been loathe to attach a bungy or some sort of spring for fear of squishing little fingers...or faces in the door with such an abrupt closure.
After much thinking....and then viewing a very similar system in a magazine (this isn't the genius part), I came up with this little beauty.
The magazine version had some sort of glass ball attached to a beautifully topped fence post.
Ours is much more....utilitarian but, still, brilliant.
We've used a branch found in the woods behind the house, some twine, a mason jar and two eye screws.
Briar and I dangerously used the reciprocating saw to create a pointed end on one end of the branch and a flat side on the other.
I pounded it into the ground using a sledge hammer about a 60 cm (2') away from the hinge of the gate.
We attached an eye screw near the top of the post and another near the middle of the top bar of the gate.
Liv punched a hole in the sealing disk of the mason jar with a nail.
Folded in half we fed a small amount of the twine through the hole in the lid and the sealing ring. In the loop under the disk, we fed a bent nail to anchor the twine in the lid.
Briar filled the jar with soil making sure to remove as many 'critters' as he could find so as not to subject them to a harsh and untimely death inside the jar of doom. The jar was screwed into the lid. (The jar was the genius part....although anything heavy would work...but I still think it was mildly brilliant....)
We tied one side of the twine into the eye screw on the gate about 60 cm down and after holding it at various lengths at the post decided on the best length for the twine to be most efficient and useful.
Ta-da! Genius at work!!! Smooth, slow closing......

2 comments:

World Wide Alternative said...

OK. That's just BRILLIANT! XXxx.

Anonymous said...

Look at you, being all handy and ingenius!

Also, I'm chuckling about the jar of doom. That just made me laugh. I think I may have to incorporate the phrase into daily conversation. "Beware the jar of doom!"