What Can You Make With a Pallet?

We spent two days of the holiday weekend building a system that will better accommodate the compost of Red Door Coop.  The challenge was to buy as few materials as possible, relying on a collection of wood pallets and wood scraps.  Our only purchases were hard wire cloth, corrugated plastic, and a few pieces of wood to frame out the lids.

We cut hard wire cloth and stapled it to the pallets.  Using L-brackets, screws, nails, scrap wood, and old fence pieces, we attached it all together to form an 8' X 4' X 4' rectangle bin.  We used additional fence pieces to divide the bin into two sides.  Then Papa Hen made two lids out of the corrugated plastic, wood, hinges, and handles.  Mama Hen's favorite part was shoveling compost into the new bin.

Here's our messy start.

Then it really started to take shape.

Even with Papa Hen's long legs, it was a challenge to climb in and out to fasten the lids to the bins.    

 Innovator that he is, Papa Hen fashioned bin lid holder-openers (can you tell that I don't know what you call these things?) out of hinges and wood scraps.  They are already proving to be useful.

*Note, writer used the word "we" liberally in describing the process of building the compost bin.  Although Mama Hen has many scratches from the hard wire, Papa Hen is the true master of this project.  To restate the issue in mathematical terms, for this blog post, We = Papa Hen.