Quickles! Two-Day Refrigerator Pickles

The pickling cucumbers are starting to ripen, and we are so excited! We are a family that can’t get enough cucumbers. My little guy makes a killer cucumber salad, my older daughter loves cucumber sandwiches on pumpernickel bread, and pretty much all of us love pickles.

Pickling cucumbers are done

Because so many of us love pickles, we decided to grow pickling cucumbers, and lo and behold those are the first ones to ripen, so I decided to try my hand at making quick pickles. Quickles!

One of my favorite things to do is to reuse things. Even when I recycle it, I still feel bad when I buy one-use products or single-serve products that have all that extra packaging. Our Costco has the most delicious jarred sliced mangos, and I covet those jars. They are huge and the wrappers are easy to remove, leaving a plain glass jar. You can even take a little rubbing alcohol and get the expiration date stamp off.

They are all over my house now, containing everything from rice to tea bags to spare change, and soon Quickles!

Did you know that cucumbers are on the Dirty Dozen list? I had no idea until recently, and I’m even more excited to be growing our own now. The Handyman likes his pickles a little bit spicy, and I like mine a little bit sweet, so I decided to try my hand at creating a sweet and sweaty Quickle recipe.

First, I went into the garden and harvested the best-looking pickling cucumbers I could find. Then I sliced them into chips, along with a carrot. You don’t need to add the carrot to this recipe, but I have a softness for pickled carrots, and it does make quite a nice aesthetic addition to the jar.

 

Next I made the brine. My jars are 42 ounces, but I didn’t want to fill it completely so I could have enough room to give it a good shake every once in awhile.  If you decide to follow this recipe, the total volumes might change according to your batch size, but I would keep the ratios about the same:

• 3 cups sliced cucumbers
• 1 medium carrot, sliced
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 Tbsp Kosher salt
• 1 1/2 Tbsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 5 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 Tbsp dried dill (use more if using fresh)

Check out those colors. Aren’t they beautiful?

Once everything is together in the jar, cover the ingredients with enough water to just submerge everything. Then just screw the lid on and shove it in the fridge for two days. Carrots and garlic tend to sink, but cucumbers tend to float, so invert the jar a few times a day to make sure everything spends equal time in the brine.

I have picky pickle-eaters in my house, and these bad boys were a huge hit. I would not label these as spicy pickles, because even my little guy could eat them, so if you want more heat add more peppers. Next time I’m going to try some variations with horseradish and our fresh hot peppers when they’re ripe.

Bon appetit!

Two-day refrigerator pickles. Quickles!

DIY Tiered Planter Box from Pallet Wood

One of the best perks of being married to the Handyman is that I get the most amazing homemade presents! I get nightstands for my birthday, bookcases for Christmas, and birdhouses just because he loves me. All made from rescued wood! This year for Valentine’s Day he asked me what I wanted, and I requested a set of planter boxes for my herb garden.

The garden plan that we’ve chosen to use as our inspiration has an herb garden centerpiece, and I got really excited about designing one for our garden. The location of our garden is full sun, so I thought a tiered set of boxes would be the best way for me to be sure that I could grow both sun-sensitive herbs (like basil, which prefers afternoon shade) and sun-lovers (like chives) in the same area without giving up a lot of square footage. It will also help keep aggressive plants (like mint) from spreading all over the damn place. I like mojitos as much as the next person, but there are only so many I can drink.

So on an unusually warm February day, the Handyman, armed only with my request for a “tiered” system, built me the most amazing herb garden planter boxes.

He started by ripping apart some of the coolest, oldest, most deliciously weathered hardwood pallets that I’ve ever seen. These things had some serious character. He set aside the stringer boards to be used as legs, and started cutting up the slats.

As anyone who has ever worked with rescued wood can tell you, you don’t go into the project with dimensions in mind. The wood tells you how big your end result will be. Pallets aren’t any different. In this case, the six widest slats ended up being the sides of six rectangular planter boxes. The exact dimensions can be whatever you like, but the length of your pallet slat equals the perimeter (sum of all four sides) of your rectangle. A 48″ pallet slat can make a 12″ x 12″ square, a 10″ x 14″ rectangle, an 8″ x 16″ rectangle, or myriad other configurations, as long as the perimeter is 48″. Just know that the farther you get from a square, the smaller your surface area will be. 12×12 is 144 square inches, but 8×16 is only 128 and a 2×22 is only 44 square inches. If planting area is important to you, stay close to square. We decided to do slight rectangles to help with stability by spreading out the center of gravity a bit.

The little man got to help assemble the boxes.

Once the box sides were assembled, the smaller slats were cut to fit the bottom of the boxes, with slight gaps left to help with drainage.

The planter boxes are arranged in two columns of three boxes. Each set of three boxes is secured using a pallet board on the side, and the two columns are attached together using a third pallet board down the middle. You want enough height between boxes to allow for plant growth, sunlight exposure, and to let rainfall naturally water your herbs.

 

Also, remember that if you want your columns staggered you need to have the side supports longer on one side. A good way to avoid mistakes is to attach the pre-made boxes to the center support first, and then add the side supports.

 

Side support for Boxes 1, 3, and 5 runs from the bottom of Box 1 to the top of Box 5, whereas side support for Boxes 2, 4, and 6 begins one box-height below Box 2, to elevate it above Box 1. Center support runs from the bottom of Box 1 up to the top of Box 5.

Finally the stringer boards were attached to the base to give stability. Since our boxes are going to go in the center of the garden path, the Handyman kept the stringer boards long and narrow so we won’t have to step over them as much.

The final product is perfect for our rustic, rescued wood homestead. It’s been sitting outside the Handyman’s workshop since February so those cut ends are getting nice and weathered now. As soon as the garden is completely tilled and ready this sucker is going smack dab in the middle. I can’t wait for all the tasty goodness to start growing. I’ve already got my basil, oregano, and thyme hardening off and getting ready to go outside, and today I bought some mint and chive plants, since those seeds didn’t germinate. We still have frost potential, so nothing is outside yet, but next week is Mother’s Day and my local experts tell me it’s safe then. I can hardly wait!

 

“My father never told me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”  Clarence Budington Kelland

Building a Chicken Coop for under $35

 

It really pains me to buy anything new. If you think about it, everything you’ve ever owned in your entire life still exists somewhere in a landfill. If I can keep from contributing to that, then I’m going to do my best to make it happen. And by “I”, I mean “we”, and by “we” I mean “the Handyman”. But hey, that’s why I married him; he’s handy!

So, now we are making our chicken coop. After my talk with Dax from Beets Workin’ Farm, the Handyman and I decided to lay out an outline of what features we wanted in the coop. We knew where we wanted to put it already. We have a cinder block shed mid-way through the yard, a dozen yards from where the garden is going. The kids have lovingly named it Creepy Shed, because it’s … terrifying. It’s dark, grey, dilapidated, and full of spiders. There is a new paint job in its near future, but for now it’s Creepy Shed.

Just off Creepy Shed is where the coop is going. The area gets full sun in winter, to help keep the chickens warm. In the summer months it offers shade from the leafed out maple tree and the cool breeze falls down from the forest. The proximity to the garden will make it easy for sharing vegetable things with the chickens and for sharing chicken poop with the vegetables.

There are a few features I insisted on during the coop design process.

1. I need to be able to stand up in the coop. I’m not hunching over to clean this thing out all the time.
2. I want the walls to be designed so that I can add straw for insulation in the winter, if needed.
3. I want the floor to be easy to clean and even hose off, if possible.
4. I want the nesting boxes to be accessible from outside the run so the kids can collect eggs and I don’t have to worry about chickens escaping.
5. This thing needs to be cute. I like the rustic look for sure, but I really want it to be cute too.

The Handyman didn’t take long to sketch something out that met those criteria and also fit the recommendations from Dax.

Lucky for us, there is a farm up the street that has dozens upon dozens of high-quality extra large pallets for 50 cents a piece! The Handyman also had few solid wood doors, some amazing antique hinges, and some translucent fiberglass roofing material leftover from various jobs.

So, starting with a nice, solid, framed oak pallet for the base, the Handyman began the coop.

Pallets make up the base and sides

Using pallets is a great way to reduce your environmental impact and save some money, but it certainly doesn’t make the job any easier. Everything must be squared, shimmed, and shored up to make up for the fact that the wood is imperfect and nothing matches. Additionally, the poor Handyman was working on a very slight slope, making it even more challenging to get everything square.

Once the sides were up, the corners squared, and Creepy Shed had a little patchwork done, the roof went on. We got really lucky because the Handyman had scrap roofing material from a previous job. It is translucent corrugated fiberglass, which is just perfect because it will let the light in to help warm the coop during the winter, but in summer the roof is shaded by the maple tree so it won’t be a hot house in there.

Look at how much light it lets in!

The roof pieces overlap each other, the roof overlaps the coop, and the whole roof slants to follow the slope of Creepy Shed’s roof. Between each piece of overlapping roof, and at the seam where the roof meets the wall of Creepy Shed, the Handyman applied a generous line of silicone caulking to keep the rain out.

Ok, so we have the frame of the coop. Now to start making it secure and CUTE. The Handyman and I decided on a siding style known as clapboard. Essentially, you attach siding horizontally, from the bottom up, placing the next piece so that it just overlaps the one below. So, using repurposed pallet deckboards this time, he started building. Before nailing the siding, he attached a heavy wire mesh to the frame and it will eventually be buried a few inches under the soil all the way around the coop. This is to prevent any nefarious critters from getting in.

I am just in love with the vintage feel that clapboard siding brings to this coop. It’s also a great way to work with pre-cut slats of wood that might not be the correct length, because it’s a very forgiving look. For our little farmhouse it will blend in perfectly.

Once he got up a few feet, it was time to attach a nesting box. I requested a box that would stick out of the coop to save living space for the hens, and with an opening outside of the run so that I can let the kids check for eggs without worrying about the chickens escaping. So the Handyman built me a three-nest box that the kids can access without going in the run.

To make it easy to check for eggs, he built an access door using old barn door hinges and some reclaimed wood. He also continued the clapboard siding on the outside of the nest box. To make sure everything is secure against drafts, he sealed all the seams with silicone caulking.

Now that the hard part is done, the Handyman continued the clapboard siding up and around the remainder of the coop, framed out and hung the door, and sealed all the gaps so it will be free from drafts.

The floor of the coop is of particular concern for me. I know that the gaps between the deckboards of the base pallet will allow debris (read: chicken poop) to fall down below, and it could also possibly allow things to get up into the coop through the gaps. Additionally, I want to make sure that the surface of the floor is as smooth as possible so that I can sweep, scrape, spray, mop, etc. The Handyman’s suggested solution was to place a sheet of plywood on the floor of the coop, cover it with peel-and-stick vinyl floor tiles, and create tight right angles with the walls to make cleaning easier.

As a final step, he used leftover 2x4s to create a tight slide lock (viewable in the last picture). No warping doors for us! Now I have a chicken coop that I can stand up in, that gets sun exposure in the winter, gets shade in the hot summer months, has space in the walls for adding straw for insulation, has exterior nesting box access, has a floor that’s easy to clean, and is freaking cute! All it needs now is ventilation holes, a good scrubbing, some landscaping, and a run. I love the color of the sign and the nesting box door. I’m thinking about painting the coop door to match. Thoughts?

So, here’s the tally:

• 10 pallets
• 1 sheet of plywood
• 12 peel-and-stick vinyl tiles
• door
• 4 2x4s
• 2 barn door hinges
• 2 regular door hinges
• corrugated fiberglass panels
• various screws and nails
• silicone caulking

Now, a lot of this was stuff we had laying around in the Handyman’s workshop, so our cost was pretty minimal. In fact, a lot of this stuff would have just gotten thrown away eventually, if not for this project.

• $.50 per pallet
• $15 for plywood
• $.44 each per vinyl tile
• $5 worth of screws and nails
• $3 tube of caulking

This puts our total out-of-pocket cost at $33.28.

 

Now, I don’t expect that everyone has access to old doors, fiberglass panels, or their own private Handyman. These are not step-by-step directions on exactly what you should do. This is just an example of how being resourceful saves a LOT of money and gets you a really cool, customized chicken coop. Any one of the things on this list could be substituted for something else. It is possible to spend very little money and still get exactly what you want. Next up: building the chicken run and then painting!

My Handyman