Thoughts on Independence and Our Chicken Tractor Design

As we celebrated July 4th last Friday, I had a chance to put together a video about our chicken tractor design.  For those of you not familiar with a chicken tractor, it's a mobile coop that allows chickens to move around your yard or field to a fresh patch of ground every few days.

Obviously, the celebrations of that day call to mind (or at least they should) thoughts of freedom and independence.  This led me to think about how utterly dependent we have become in this country.  We begin specializing as early as high school and often reach middle age with very narrow skill sets.  This leads to real dependency on others to do many things for us.  It used to be that average folks could bake bread from scratch, repair small engines, and fix or build things in and around the house.  Now millions would be hard pressed to do any of them, or dozens of other tasks that were common a century ago.

Imagine a time 100 or 200 years ago.  Think of the skills our forebears had that we have lost.  Lots of information that simply wasn't passed down.  Sure, we can do things with technology that they couldn't, but in reality, we're only passive consumers of technology.  Very few of us could actually create technology, or have the skills to fix it if necessary (call Geek Squad!).

In the end we become enfeebled.  We're trapped.  We lack the freedom and independence that come from knowledge, skills, and self-reliance.  People buy houses with really beautiful and expensive kitchens, but don't know how to use them.  They eat out or buy microwave meals.  Increasingly, young people don't know how to cook the most basic of meals.  What a change this is.  My grandmother had to draw water from a well and cook on a wood fired stove.  EVERYTHING was made from scratch.  There were no enormous grocery stores filled with processed foods in her day.  Imagine the amount of skills and information that she possessed and I don't!

With all of this in mind, I wanted to make a video about our chicken tractor, but drifted into other thoughts.  Not that building a mobile coop is a masterpiece of self-reliance.  It's more about the idea of having the confidence to tackle whatever project you might want or need to.  This is one of the things I really like about YouTube.  Thousands of people are using it to upload "how to" videos.  Rarely do I search for a video on something I've never done before and come up wanting.  As an example, I've learned a lot about beekeeping from videos on YouTube.  After watching a bunch of them, reading books, and even taking an online course - we launched into keeping honey bees.

With regard to our chicken tractor, it's a pretty simple design.  Having attended the design school and spent several years as a carpenter and contractor, this wasn't a really difficult project or build.  I'm sure for some it might seem really complicated, but I assure you it's not.  It took a couple of hours to build with our son, Isaac, and cost less than $200 in materials.  It's worked great for us and can serve as a temporary coop for future flocks of egg layers or broilers.

There are three parts to the video because of the upload limits on YouTube.  Below is part one.  Hopefully, it adds something to the online "how to" library.  The key for us is having our children help with all of these projects.  If you're in the humble position of learning to do new things, why not bring your children along and have them learn as well!