Beds!

Please excuse me while I freak out for just a wee minute.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.

Ever since we got out here, we have been working our butts off to make this place 'a farm'. And yes, in a previous post I redefined the term to fit my needs. But I think I have now made a tiny step of progress that no one can deny is definitely a step forward in the farm realm.

I made raised beds.

We have clay soil here, and while I am putting the garden on what seems to have been my great-grandfather's garden, I would still have to add to his already amended soil to be able to do anything. And since I would have to bring in dirt anyway, and I would like to get stuff growing this year, I'm doing raised beds instead of rows in the ground. I am trying to loosen up the dirt under the beds enough so that roots will have that extra bit of room, but this is the ground that broke the tiller, after all.....

My cousin had demolished his friend's shed and brought me what wood was salvageable, and I took down my great-grandfather's shed. Between them I might get 4 - maybe 5 - beds of varying sizes. I'm shooting for somewhere in the 3 - 4 by 8ft range.

So far I did two out of the siding my cousin brought me - and I am very proud of them! 

The unsorted pile of wood from my cousin. It has been covered for the past few months with the sheets of roofing. I also have the door from said shed with a gorgeous glass doorknob...

Untreated side. This is what the dirt will touch. You can tell the wood's not in the best shape, but sturdy enough for garden beds.

I cut off the unusable bits (if there were any), measured all the boards of the same type (as they are the same width and I'm OC like that), and sorted them by length. Easier to piece them together. These guys are tongue-and-groove siding, which was once red.

The only side of the two beds made with 3 whole boards. Woot.

The boards that needed to be pieced together I did so with scrap pieces of wood. I am not afraid of glue, and those screws were used as I happened to have a half of a box laying around. Turns out I used all the screws and was one short for this project - I cannibalized something else for said screw, and no one will ever be the wiser!

The middle piece holds the three boards together, the 2x4's on the end are for the corners. It'll make sense in a minute...

I used two convenient stumps to prop up the long side while I screwed the short side in and made the square (!!) corners. Both sides are screwed into the 2x4 on the corner.

The two L pieces face off!

I made the two L-shaped pieces, put them together, fastened the two remaining corners, and voila!

Two beds. One is 3'x8'x16", one is 4'x8'x10"

The only wood I didn't use - and the stuff on the left was pulled out of the running before I started piecing things together - you can see it's broken or otherwise unsuitable. I've kept it, though, to use as brackets and whatnot for future projects.

I'm also very proud of my new phone's picture taking abilities...