Chickens are "processed"

This morning we put the new trailer-chicken-coop to use and delivered 36 chickens and two turkeys to be "processed" for us. The place is about 45 minutes away, which seemed like a long distance, but now that we know how to find it, it's not such a big deal.

They people that do the slaughtering have a very clean, professional operation. We had an appointment scheduled for 10am, and they were ready for us. We came back at 1:30 and picked up the birds, all neatly cleaned and dressed.

As you can see, the two tractors are now empty:













And the fridges are full. The birds need to be chilled for a couple of days in the fridge before they can be put in the freezer.












Next up, these guys. We have six turkeys left and we've got an appointment for November 28th. We wanted to let them get a bit bigger before we took them in. Besides, I don't think they would have fit in the trailer!









Whew. It was a bit of work building the trailer box and running the birds back and forth, but it was definitely a lot nicer and easier than "processing" them ourselves.

Cheers,
Grant

Recumbent bikes and chicken transporters

We put in a bit more work on the recumbent bikes over the weekend. On my bike we concentrated on getting the rear triangle set up. It was relatively straight-forward.

Here's the rear triangle being tacked into place.










Now that we've got everything tacked together and verified that it's all straight and true, it's time to weld it permanently in place.











It's finally starting to look like a bike!
Note that I've got my BionX electric-assist wheel on the back. Since this bike will be a commuter, it'll definitely have my electric-assist system on there.







Here's a "test fit". It's a bit uncomfortable right now as I'm sitting on a piece of plywood, leaning back against the boom that is still hot from the welder. And with no pedals or handlebars, it's very tippy.








Next up, getting the rear triangle setup on Mike's Marauder. This was a real challenge, as the forks had to be tacked into place in two parts and manually aligned. The design calls for chopping the forks off a donor bike and attaching them to the boom without any jig or supports to ensure correct alignment. We spent a LOT of time eyeballing it, adjusting, moving, cursing, breaking tacks and re-tacking. Finally we got it level with judicious use of a level, a long threaded rod to show any mis-alignments and a good amount of force applied to the forks.



Next up, the chickens. This year, we got enough meat birds to justify the cost and effort of taking them to a place to be slaughtered for us. Last year we did them all by hand, and proved that we know how to do it, and most importantly that we CAN do it. Now since we don't have anything to prove, we got 35 chickens and 8 turkeys. We're going to take them to a place about 45 minutes away to be processed for us.

Of course, this led to the challenge transportation. I just recently got a trailer hitch installed on the Jetta (we seem to be gradually turning our diesel sedan into a work truck). I borrowed my friend's Costco trailer (which I like a lot, because it's light enough that the trailer itself doesn't consume a huge portion of my car's admittedly small towing capacity). Then I used scrap lumber and sheeting we had laying around from other projects to build a "get the birds to market" trailer.




All four compartments are hinged for easy access to the birds. The front compartment is twice the height of the back, for transporting the turkeys. They're quite large these days.









Lots of stuff going on in the ol' Homestead.

Cheers,
Grant

Building a recumbent bike - part 1

As I get more into e-biking and commuting on my bike, the more I realize how uncomfortable an upright bike is for long trips. Inefficient, too, when compared with recumbent bikes.

I've been riding to and from work 1 to 3 days per week, 60km per day on a "commuter-ized" Raleigh mountain bike. I've always been interested in recumbent bikes, so I decided to get one. They're quite expensive, and I've got a friend who is interested in recumbent bikes and knows a lot about welding and building things. So we decided we'd work together to build a couple of recumbent bikes for ourselves.

Initially I wanted to build a "Mach 2" using plans posted on www.recycledRecumbent.com, but my friend Mike convinced me to go with the Atomic Zombie Meridian, for several reasons.

Mike wants to build the Atomic Zombie Marauder, which is a low-racer style of recumbent. He wants it for the pure joy of speed that you can get from the low-racer design. I want mine to be a comfortable, stable, and reliable commuter that I don't mind putting on upwards of 300km per week. I also am willing to sacrifice some of that vaunted recumbent efficiency in the wind for better visibility in traffic, since my commute takes me through fairly busy car traffic. If I like it enough, I may get and install a WindWrap or Zzipper fairing to improve aerodynamics and help keep the weather off me in foul-weather riding.

We discussed our plans and designs, collected a few "donor" bikes for parts, and bought some 1 1/4 inch box steel. Then on a sunny Sunday we started cutting up donor bikes for the parts we needed. Here is a picture of the first cut-up donor bike.






Cutting up the bikes involved using a reciprocating saw and a couple of grinders (one with a cut-off wheel and another with a grinding wheel). Later we added yet another grinder with a cup-style wire wheel for cleanup work. Of course we made lots of pretty sparks.






Then on another sunny weekend day, we got started on cutting and shaping the box steel that would form the "spine" of the bike. The three parts are cut to specific lengths and specific angles (according to the design in Mike's copy of the Atomic Zombie book), then welded together. Here, Mike's cutting the main boom to length with the correct angle for the back-rest.





Next, welding the back-rest onto the main boom. Note the clamped jig that holds everything straight and true while you're working on it. That's why working with box tubing is so nice. It makes it easy to get everything aligned properly. If we were using round tubing, I think we'd still be setting up the jigs to get everything to align and stay in-plane.





With all welds you tack it in place first, verify that everything is straight and true and proper, then go around it again with the welder, completing the weld. Here's what the completed weld looks like before clean-up.








Next up, clean up the area around the weld with a wire wheel. You never want to weld or paint on a surface that hasn't been cleaned.










Here Mike is welding a gusset in place behind the seat back-rest. This provides additional strength.









And here's the start of one of our recumbent bikes! It mostly looks like a big steel hockey stick right now, but it'll look more like a bike soon.









We measured the angle for the head-set, according to the Atomic Zombie book, but it didn't look right to us. So we left it tacked in place, so we can easily remove it and change the angle if necessary.








Here's one of the bikes so far, with the headset tacked in place.










Double-checking the seat-back angle on the second bike.










And here's the result so far: two frames for our recumbent bikes! The different lengths are for the different heights of the riders.










Next up, sorting out the headset angle and adding more parts! Woo-hoo! This is exciting.

Cheers,
Grant