My grandpa swore by this type of fence. He said money was hard to come by during the depression and metal was rationed during the war and on the farm there were lots of scrub trees to use...and they were free
@@theterribleanimator1793 they know that would never go over so they will/would fine you for unsafe or not allowed structure. And demand you remove/ replace it with the expensive stuff.
@@theterribleanimator1793 What are you another one of those anti-government ,paranoid, dipsticks. It's always "they" isn't it? Don't like it here, move to to russia. You might like it better there.
Thats awesome. Also provides shade for the birds and helps conceal the girls from arial predators. My aunts homestead had an issue last year with a bird of prey picking off some of her younger egg layers.
I cut down an oak tree to make uprights recently. Three of the four died as expected and one sprouted leaves and started growing! So I’ve been watering it and it keeps growing! I hope it survives the winter I’d love to see how it grows more
Modern term is SUCKERS. In my city you can recieve a Citation for: "Suckers growing out of the base of a tree.' Yes, that is an ACTUAL ARTICLE. I know this personally 🤬 I've read cosping trees during Medieval / Ren periods gave basketmakers their weaving resources. My City also mandated EVERY ASH TREE in the city parkways to be cut down. I had two 40year old healthy ash trees , VIBRANT & HEALTHY that were chopped down and stumps bored out!. My car had been parked in total soothing shade now it gets parked in blistering S/SW sun !
Add mud, and a roof, and you have an even older Mud and wattle hut, from way earlier in man's history. Nice enclosure. Likely just as good as a chicken wire fence, with a lower cost. And if you need to stop (Or at least slow down) a North wind, or something, adding some mud mixed with straw, or cow manure (Or, both) to the walls on the side that stops the wind, you could do so easily. You could also add a lean to shade if needed, to block the heat of the afternoon sun, using the same materials. Farming, like soldiering, means "always upgrading what you have, to improve your position".
A few years back, I build a fence just like this around my fire pit - it really helps keep the heat in on cold nights, and is still in good condition. I used alder that grows back. When the fence needs work, I will use what grew back from the original root system. If you have hawks active in the area, you may want to string up some rope or twine across the top of the enclosure to make it harder for them to get the the chickens. The addition of a rooster will also provide some extra defense if a hawk does come visiting.
As an southeast Asian, I'm pretty jealous that they can do this, every tree in my country is full with fly and ant that fight back, it's not pleasant thing when you try taking down the bush, good video 😂
In case anyone is wondering, Chicken Wire was invented in the early 1840s. Using "wattle" for structures dates back since the beginning of recorded human history. By the 18th century there were dozens of different chicken coop designs, including ones suspended from the ground (which look weird). But nothing really replaced the wattle fence concept until chicken wire, once the stuff started being mass produced in England. Wattle was used for building homes (walls), as well as erosion control and even ground leveling (including for early radar systems in WWII). Not bad for some little sticks.
Chickens? Chickens! They are great to have on a farm. Chickens eat pretty much everything, and besides meat and eggs they produce valuable fertilizer that you can use in vegetable garden. However, Jon! Since you are adding livestock, you should think about ways to preserve the produce. With winter coming, building an ice house to store meat, dairy and eggs would be a good idea. If you manage to finish it before winter, you can make a stockpile of ice for next summer. Building the ice house, filling it with ice from the lake, then showing how to preserve food inside would make for an excellent, informative mini-arc for Homestead videos. Also, with ice house on hand you can make homemade ice cream! 😍
Chickens are a daily activity. You gotta periodically remove waste from the pen, collect eggs, feed and water (more in winter bc the water will freeze over), protect them from predators, and let them out to pick for bugs (they’ll go nuts if they see an earthworm), and herd them back up into the pen to roost. They’re a lot of fun.
Great job on the fence! I wish we could make this but all we have is a ton of Mesquite here on our property in southern Arizona. We did buy Ocotillo fencing recently to keep the rabbits and javalinas out of my plants but they are too spikey to make into a wattle fence! Our chickens have a very large fenced in area with triangles of wood at the corners for shelter from hawks. We also clip the primary feathers on one wing of our chickens to keep them from flying out of the pen. It works great and it does not hurt the chickens or prevent them from escaping hawks. Oh and we have a chicken palace we made with scrap wood, it turned out gorgeous and the girls have a ramp to get into the house.
I need to stick to your channel. I get so stressed seeing news on wild fires, lakes drying up, global warming, but if it's something I alone can't fix then why stress out about it? Thank you for your channel.
It looks like you are holding a Dominique Chicken, in the thumbnail. Great breed of chicken. Oldest breed in America, very docile, great forager, dual purpose. I have 7 of them.👍😁
Who does this music? It is outstanding! Here in Virginia (and many places in the South) a willow branch will root and grow if inserted into the soil and kept wet enough (summer rain is often enough) and the wattle fence willow "posts" will grow and eventually have to be thinned, which can be used to replace older horizontal wattle stands.
There's a house near my son's old school that has a lovely wattle fence sectioning off the part of the front yard closest to the house from the rest. It has an archway with a gate all made from more wattling. I will sometimes go out of my way to go past it. And that was a very nice little Barred Rock pullet sitting on your lap at the end, Jon. I love the gentle chirps the younglings make.
@@amysbees6686 Be careful what you choose to do it with! When we first moved in, I cleared out the line of forsythia bushes in the chosen area for a garden. I made low wattle fencing (8-10") around the new garden beds using the cut forsythia branches. I didn't expect it to last more than a year or so. The weavers broke down as expected, but the uprights took root! So more forsythia eradication needed.🤣
I'm not so sure this is great for chickens. Maybe pigs or something of that nature. My chickens flew 8 feet straight up into the rafters of their coop to sleep at night, certainly would have no trouble hopping a fence. Plus, they reliably return to a coop to sleep if left free to wander. Predators are going to be a problem also. I had to bury chicken wire 12" underground to stop raccoons from digging in. They would kill a dozen chickens in a night when they had the chance. Wouldn't even eat them, just kill as many as they could. Looks like you have a box there to lock them in at night which is good. I don't know how you would protect them at night in a period accurate way except to have a guard dog. I'd be interested if they used other techniques.
Just clip the wing feathers and they can't fly over the fence. As for predators, the birds will roost in the coop at night. Just close the coop up after dark and open it in the morning.
You don’t just leave your chickens wandering loose in a pen at night- you always put them away in the coop, chicken house or a stall/ section of the barn. Everyone on the frontier would have had at least a couple horses or mules, and likely a few other livestock. You at least put the chickens away in a small coop or shed at night, else there’s no point to having chickens because you won’t have them long. Yes, if you want adult chickens to stay in the pen you clip their wings- but most of the time they can roam about the clearing safely in the daytime, especially if there are people and a watchdog outside. The pen would be good for chicks as they are learning to be outdoors and not wander away.
My chickens would fly the coop as well. I reminder my husband that the fence needed a roof to protect them from hawks during the day and to keep them in their fenced in area. The girls were always put up at night. There was one day I came from work early to find the door wide open. Apparently the door wasn't latched closed and the wind blew it open. After searching the house, I went back to the dining room and found 4 of my chickens having a wonderful time. There was never a dull moment with those girls.
I was out walking today and noticed a bumper crop of hickory nuts around. It brought to mind a possibility for a subject for your channel. Pawcohiccora is a porridge made from hickory nuts by the Algonquin Indians.
Coppicing is a very ancient practice, and one that we should all look into bringing back where we can. As shown here, the wood produced is a great resource. In Europe before "the war", woodsmen tended the wild places not because they were "environmentalists" but because the woods provided gobs of materials that were used to make things for the homes around the woods. Bodgers were men who'd go out, cut wood, and turn it into bowls, troughs, buckets, chairs, cabinets, fences, hurdles, etc. In short, it was local craftsmen providing goods and services for local customers. And that's what built great communities that had a culture specific to their location. People drove the Bodgers out, basically, because they didn't think about the 2nd Order Effects of decisions they made - like supporting a new tax or regulation. Folks didn't think about how those things impact the small businesses, always adding up and driving up the costs of doing business. Today, coppicing and pollarding is still done, but not on the scale it used to be. The result is that our wild lands are in worse health and prone to disease. Using the wood for more than fires in the winter is critical to bringing back the healthy status of the property, and often that means we have to go the "harder" way of doing something. Putting up some mass-produced wire fencing might seem cheaper and easier, but the 2nd Order Effects are costly, indeed! Plus, the woven fence adds character and a rugged elegance to the property. I'd encourage folks to look up "bodger" on instagram or here on youtube to get a sense of just what beauty can be brought to the world with simple tools and a bit of generational knowledge.
I got backyard chickens during the first Covid lockdown and now I'm obsessed. I was recently telling someone my fantasy job would be a chicken history interpreter at someplace like Colonial Williamsburg. And then Iearned that's actually a real job. I need to move to VA.
An interesting thing is oaks will do what ash would. In Japan, they have a practice of harvesting oak, where they leave an oak stump handy for a few years, then cut down what sprouts from it.
In Northern VA we have this “devil” of a tree called the locust. When young it has great thorns and it’s flexible. Somewhat. Good for fencing if you want but mostly it’s annoying. Once grown and matured it virtually indestructible. Black locust for fence posts will outlast a generation I think.
When they're old they have thorns too. They were the bane of my dad's existence. In our area, they shoot up quickly but only live 10 or 15 years, then die and rot from the top. Those spikey branches blow down in storms. They have a beautiful, sweet-smelling cream bunch of flowers that bloom in the spring.
Locust will last. Depending on where you are there is also Osage. Another thorny tree known for its rot resistance. (also known as Hedge) Hedge posts last a long time.
As a side note because I want to be manly I tried to fell a locust using a good and sharp ax. I’m not sure who won that battle. My shoulders gave out. The ax edge gave out. Eventually the locust gave out. Thank goodness that I am a home brewer. The beer replenished.
@@qgc3426 Black locust is probably one of the hottest firewoods you will ever get. It may not have the total BTU's of hickory, but it will get your stove glowing and melt the grates if you're not careful.
Ok so I’m going to impose my thought onto this thread which are not relevant to it. Since I may perhaps gotten your ear. How about a series documenting roads and byways. You made a homestead. How about explaining how the routes were made between such back in that time. Were they well worn paths or did they need help? Franklin surveyed the first route I think but the road infrastructure to me is fascinating.
This might be a bit anecdotal, but from where my farming family came from in Southern England, the woven mobile panels used for livestock pens were called "Waddles". When they came to Australia in the late eighteenth century, they constructed them from the local trees that we know call Wattyls (Acacia). Might be a coincidence, but a Waddle and a Wattyl sound pretty similar.
I'm a leader in the Royal Rangers ministry in my church on Fay RD. Syracuse NY. We have a 1754 re-enactment group which is part of the Royal Rangers ministry.
Aaah a re-enactment group! That explains the specific year. It doesn't seem like something I'd want to join, but it is always good to see people passing on those types of skills :)
@Uncle Charlie if society collapses, power plants fail, and nuclear weapons are raining down, a chicken coop won't matter at all. This prepping stuff is a fantasy for a specific type of nerd, but the best thing you could do would be build a bomb shelter and pack it with food and seeds, but even that is extremely dubious. Hey, if you want to support local contractors, go for it, they would appreciate the business.
Love how your homestead is coming together. Life was much harder back then but I believe it was much simpler. After all the crazy hub bub of life now your programs always make me homesick for a simpler life, even if the work was harder. Thank you for the peace your programs bring. God Bless you and all your help.❤🇺🇸❤🇺🇸❤
Those chickens are going to churn that little pen into a muck pit so fast lol. It's a lot more work and materials, but if you're capable of it a series of pens that size wrapping around the coop that you can rotate the chickens to once a week or so is a lot better for them. Saves on feed too since they are able to forage without scorching the earth in their enclosure lol
Yeah, love that series... all the series of different eras. Not a fan of Tom though, I would have preferred Alex to be in that one as well. Ruth, Peter, and Alex are a great team.
@@kellywhite9299 Tom was great in Secrets of the Castle though because he brought in a bunch of the military history. So if you want to see Ruth make armor and the boys play with crossbows and catapults, not bad!
You guys are really blessed with a great property. So fun to watch you add on capability to your homestead. I can't imagine the behind the scenes issues you had to deal with -- building permits? Safety inspections? Another superbly made, entertaining and educational video. THANK YOU!!!
as long as whatever you build doesn't have a concrete foundation, you can label the structures on your land as "Non permanent" and you don't need any permits to keep them.
take 2 wattle fences and pile rocks in between..and you have a gabion wall...very common when you needed a wall, but couldn't build a proper stone wall. the stones came from when you plowed to plant.
Wood for bows back in England was farmed by coppicing trees so they create huge thickets of straight branches. There was a tremendous amount of forest management that took place during the Middle Ages because of how valuable the resources in them was to life back then.
Really like this one. I love chickens and miss keeping some. The last coop I built had a small "chicken" gate that could be opened into the garden. Great for having the birds keep the insect pests down. You've never seen violence, I hope, like that of several hens going after tomato hornworms. Wow. But you do have to keep an eye on them. After they have exhausted the bug population they go after your veggies and you have to push them out of the garden. Back to egg laying!
I made my deer blind last year by building it as a wattle type fence, but I put the branches closer together to make it harder to see through and then I used pine boughs to fill in for concealment so you couldn't see into it at all. It worked very well and didn't cost me a dime because I had to cut the brush down anyway to see where I wanted to hunt on the property.
If I may make a suggestion. When making the point, try holding the post at an angle, and swinging the axe straight up and down. I think you will have fewer glancing blows that way.
Something I love about wattle and other sorts of similar material is how universal it is in places where the local flora support it. The site of a chicken coop with a wattle fence could be just as familiar to say a Norse settler in Yorkshire as a British settler in the new world, or even an iron age farmer in their hillfort.
Here a protip.... get yourself a goose and raise it up with the next batch of chicks. The goose will alert the chickens to aerial threats and your fence will keep out the larger predaters.
Watching all these videos for my eventual homestead in the remote wilderness. Very insightful, even able to recreate smaller versions in my living room.
Thank you! My grandparents did something like this when I was a little kid but they used sassafras. Can still remember the smell. God Bless and stay safe.
Simply fantastic. This is the first I've heard about ash trees re-growing. I'm delighted to hear that. Do everything you can to protect your chickens from foxes. I used to help raise some quail only to learn after I stopped, a fox snuck in and annihilated every one of them.
I grew up on a small holding poultry farm, about 50 laying hens at the best of times. What a fantastic episode to watch and reminiscence over dinner with. Thanks
It's so wonderful to see young folks helping and learning. Great fence! I run cord across the top of my run and weave it into a pattern that is close enough to keep hawks out. The openings are about 2 foot square.
I build a small - knee high fence to keep ducks out of the vege patch last summer. Used oak of all things for posts and nearby roadside thicket had long straight thin oak. Then whatever I could find for the weaving. Fortunately some hazels at my place could be thinned, but also used water shoots from plums, quinces and other fruit trees, and collected a bunch of alder wood from a nearby river verge. It is intuitive and highly enjoyable. Love how it curves and makes natural shapes easily.
Making a really really big chicken basket. The only time I've heard of chickens and baskets is when they're cooked and served in a basket with chips (French fries for the American viewers).
it's a good channel for prepping. If the world falls apart, we may return to the pre-industrial age, but there's no reason to fall back to the stone age. An 18th-19th century lifestyle is completely achievable even if all of our infrastructure fails, factories and power plants become inoperable, etc. There are no prerequisites for this lifestyle other than knowledge.
@@AngryAlfonse If some calamity so terrible occurs that all infrastructure, powerplants etc fail, you will have much bigger concerns than making a chicken coop.
@@EMCF_ correct. Those concerns would be food, water, and shelter. Then down the road when the initial calamity is over and people are trying to figure out how to survive long term, the concerns will be long term food, water and shelter. Chickens fall into the whole "long term food" part.
I was so happy when you mentioned Coppicing and Pollarding i don't know when the practice died out, but for cooking fires and such where sticks are so handy. im really surprised that the idea is not used more.
At least here in Britain, Hazel fencing has been used for millennia. It's more often used in bushcraft nowadays, but still a great alternative to stock fencing if you have the time and effort to build it.
@@johnstevenson1709 Not really in the same way as in Europe. Colonial America used wattle and also stones to create fences, and we do use some bushes (usually some sort of evergreen) to create hedges, but we don't interweave living trees and bushes to create hedge rows.
Thank u soooo much! I just moved onto my five acres of raw land three days ago and this is gonna help me so much for fencing in goats as well as another for chickens yaaaay
Thank you for sharing. Love learning about how people lived in the past. Would you consider doing a video on how people fed their livestock in the 18th century?
Plus mulberry also grows little bunches of flexible branches everywhere it's cut. Completely natural coppicing. But nah, the chickens will have plenty of mosquitoes and flies to eat being that close to the pond.
If you have mulberry trees you can make silk because the silk worms eat mulberry leaves. Women in the US made their own silk in the 18th and 19th century in this way.
The great thing with ash coppice is that it produces brilliantly sizes firewood that is easy to manage and doesn't require splitting. Cut on a short cycle (7 to 12 years) you can produce an endless log supply. An ash stool (stoll being the word for a coppiced stump) will live for several centuries. Some of the oldest British trees are coppice stools - they become huge.
I helped my grandpa build a wattle fence just like this. All wattle fences are built without corners if possible because they are stronger than corners . Do a daube and wattle wall for the actual chicken house… I rather fight a bear…
I started a project like this this spring. it's surprising how many sticks it takes.... it's an enormous undertaking. bring friends if your start making one.
Black locust wood posts are what my grandfather used. They resist rotting and last forever, are a hard wood that grows quickly. Great for erosion control. And permaculture for revitalizing land. The black willow can be cut to grow dense coppices for the wattle the bark has the same base as used in aspirin and makes excellent charcoal for black powder for your flintlocks.
When we were working on the attic of a log cabin from the 1800's (they slid it up a hill for the main part of the house and built onto it from there), We started taking off the interior 'stucco' on the walls to find they'd crisscrossed willows (lattice) and just applied the stucco material over that and painted and wallpapered over it. It was a dusty mess to take out, but we got it done. You build with what you have. It took a lot of work to rid the ditch-banks of the willows, in order to get the irrigation water flowing freely again.
A big chicken basket. Hummmm, that makes me hungry. Lol!!! Excellent job guys! Next, could you show us how settlers would make pens, or cribs for their bigger livestock like cattle and horses. Thanks for all you do!!! These are very interesting.
Waddle fences that were well built and anchored have been used to contain pigs, sheep and cattle. If you want to make a shelter, use wattle for walls and cover them with daub. Roof it over with pine boughs or even thatching. All for free, made with materials harvested from your own homestead.
Keep adding on to your homestead property and i’m sure school/scout groups are going to start asking to come by and see it. Impressive historical setup.
As a life-long chicken keeper, this really intrigues me! I have to do this sometime! The chicken house is just about the same proportions as the one I built in my back yard, 6' wide x 8' long, 8' high on one side and 4' high on the other. I would close in around the bottom of the coop though. Knowing chickens, they'll figure out a way to go under there... and then you'll wonder why they aren't laying as many eggs as they used to. And you can't get under there to get the eggs!
Livestock you say!? What about bees!? Fun fact we bought some knives from you for our kitchen and our sharpening guy loves them!! Fabulous fence. The chickens have a beautiful home. Nice woof too!
ive always wanted to put a fence like this up before, but i was always kind of intimidated by the idea...but seeing you do it, made me realize its actually a fairly simple process. thank you
Here in the Philippines the farmers usually use Madre de cacao/Kakawate for fencing because the branches readily grow roots and then you have a live wall, with the bonus of the leaves being great livestock feed (for goats usually)
I've been wanting to do wattle fencing for our garden and around our trees. Thank you for showing what type of trees are good to use. The homestead is shaping up nicely. I can't wait to see what you guys do next.
If you had poplar in your area, I would imagine that that would work out well for fencing material for the chickens. This was another awesome video. Cheers! ✌️
I am really enjoying this series and hope you will consult mister Drew Conroy for information on working oxen on the homestead in the near future. This is something I really want to get into and learn more about.
Your little Dominecker is just like ours: inquistive and very friendly. Ours like to sit on us too. They are actually historically accurate, Washington and Lincoln both kept them. The New Hampshires (or Rhodies) and Buff Orpingtons are both later, I believe. Thanks for the fencing info, I'm going to store that away in case I ever need it. That could come in handy.
Thank you Thirza, I was wondering what breed of chickens those were and whether they were around in the 18th century. And yes, you're right. Orpingtons are from the late 19th century. Up here in the northern plains Orpingtons are one of the most preferred breeds for hobbyist and small farm chicken production. Good for eggs or meat, and they are one of the best at handling the cold. Smart too, if you're in an area where predators aren't a problem they'll pretty much look after themselves from spring through fall. I couldn't raise chickens though, if I bought 10 chickens for eggs and meat what I'd end up with is 10 pets. Odd too, since I grew up on a farm you'd think it wouldn't be a big deal to raise chickens for meat, but like you say, they're inquisitive and friendly.
My grandpa swore by this type of fence. He said money was hard to come by during the depression and metal was rationed during the war and on the farm there were lots of scrub trees to use...and they were free
matter of time until they tax the shrubs, i assure you.
@@theterribleanimator1793 they know that would never go over so they will/would fine you for unsafe or not allowed structure. And demand you remove/ replace it with the expensive stuff.
@@theterribleanimator1793 What are you another one of those anti-government ,paranoid, dipsticks. It's always "they" isn't it? Don't like it here, move to to russia. You might like it better there.
@@crystald3655 You can go with him.
A saying my old summer-camp coworkers and I used to use; “If it’s free, it’s for me.”
Of course we’d use it in regards to the food they gave us.
So if that's just a really big chicken basket, does that mean when the chickens lay eggs, all your eggs will be in one basket?
😂
😂🤣
But... They say "don't put all your eggs in one basket" so... Multiple chicken baskets?
This is the single funniest comment on TH-cam!!
Who’s dad are you
I know of a fellow who built a wattle fence and used green willow for the uprights. They rooted and grew. Amazing.
Thats pretty cool
Thats awesome. Also provides shade for the birds and helps conceal the girls from arial predators. My aunts homestead had an issue last year with a bird of prey picking off some of her younger egg layers.
I cut down an oak tree to make uprights recently. Three of the four died as expected and one sprouted leaves and started growing! So I’ve been watering it and it keeps growing! I hope it survives the winter I’d love to see how it grows more
Coppicing is a long lost art and was vital for thousands of years for building and making so many things. Great to see it in use.
We use it here a great deal . We have hazel to work with ❤️
Yeah it's super common still in the UK.
It was never really something that became traditional in America, I think mostly because of the sheer volume of timber available to colonists.
My family used it to keep useful sized poles on hand. Its easy and something the kids can do
Modern term is SUCKERS. In my city you can recieve a Citation for: "Suckers growing out of the base of a tree.' Yes, that is an ACTUAL ARTICLE. I know this personally 🤬
I've read cosping trees during Medieval / Ren periods gave basketmakers their weaving resources.
My City also mandated EVERY ASH TREE in the city parkways to be cut down. I had two 40year old healthy ash trees , VIBRANT & HEALTHY that were chopped down and stumps bored out!.
My car had been parked in total soothing shade now it gets parked in blistering S/SW sun !
this channel is my happy place singled to have found it
Add mud, and a roof, and you have an even older Mud and wattle hut, from way earlier in man's history. Nice enclosure. Likely just as good as a chicken wire fence, with a lower cost. And if you need to stop (Or at least slow down) a North wind, or something, adding some mud mixed with straw, or cow manure (Or, both) to the walls on the side that stops the wind, you could do so easily. You could also add a lean to shade if needed, to block the heat of the afternoon sun, using the same materials.
Farming, like soldiering, means "always upgrading what you have, to improve your position".
A few years back, I build a fence just like this around my fire pit - it really helps keep the heat in on cold nights, and is still in good condition. I used alder that grows back. When the fence needs work, I will use what grew back from the original root system.
If you have hawks active in the area, you may want to string up some rope or twine across the top of the enclosure to make it harder for them to get the the chickens. The addition of a rooster will also provide some extra defense if a hawk does come visiting.
As an southeast Asian, I'm pretty jealous that they can do this, every tree in my country is full with fly and ant that fight back, it's not pleasant thing when you try taking down the bush, good video 😂
Probably the real reason East Asians did all their wattling with bamboo despite having plenty of better trees for it.
@@MogofWar oh yes, bamboo is miracle "log" it's basically can do anything from building, cooking and infrastructure, my culture used bamboo a lot too
Same here, in hawaii we got little fire ants which cover you now. Didn't have them not long ago.
In case anyone is wondering, Chicken Wire was invented in the early 1840s. Using "wattle" for structures dates back since the beginning of recorded human history. By the 18th century there were dozens of different chicken coop designs, including ones suspended from the ground (which look weird). But nothing really replaced the wattle fence concept until chicken wire, once the stuff started being mass produced in England. Wattle was used for building homes (walls), as well as erosion control and even ground leveling (including for early radar systems in WWII).
Not bad for some little sticks.
Add daub (clay+manure+chopped straw+water to make a thick mud) and you have yourself a wall!
This is still done in parts of the uk, we use living hazel and lay it over and get a living hedge, it’s all done with willow and hawthorn.
Chickens? Chickens! They are great to have on a farm. Chickens eat pretty much everything, and besides meat and eggs they produce valuable fertilizer that you can use in vegetable garden.
However, Jon!
Since you are adding livestock, you should think about ways to preserve the produce. With winter coming, building an ice house to store meat, dairy and eggs would be a good idea. If you manage to finish it before winter, you can make a stockpile of ice for next summer.
Building the ice house, filling it with ice from the lake, then showing how to preserve food inside would make for an excellent, informative mini-arc for Homestead videos.
Also, with ice house on hand you can make homemade ice cream! 😍
Its Indiana. There would never be enough ice for him to do that.
yuck, lake ice.
Please ask him to build us an ice house!
@@LordoftheOzarks I bet there will be at some point in the winter
@@pineappleparty1624 this is the 1700s remember 😂
Chickens are a daily activity. You gotta periodically remove waste from the pen, collect eggs, feed and water (more in winter bc the water will freeze over), protect them from predators, and let them out to pick for bugs (they’ll go nuts if they see an earthworm), and herd them back up into the pen to roost. They’re a lot of fun.
Great job on the fence! I wish we could make this but all we have is a ton of Mesquite here on our property in southern Arizona. We did buy Ocotillo fencing recently to keep the rabbits and javalinas out of my plants but they are too spikey to make into a wattle fence! Our chickens have a very large fenced in area with triangles of wood at the corners for shelter from hawks. We also clip the primary feathers on one wing of our chickens to keep them from flying out of the pen. It works great and it does not hurt the chickens or prevent them from escaping hawks. Oh and we have a chicken palace we made with scrap wood, it turned out gorgeous and the girls have a ramp to get into the house.
At least with Ocotillo, you get flowers to eat.
@@Erewhon2024 haha you're right!
I need to stick to your channel. I get so stressed seeing news on wild fires, lakes drying up, global warming, but if it's something I alone can't fix then why stress out about it? Thank you for your channel.
So much cozier feeling than chicken wire. Looks like home! Great job.
It looks like you are holding a Dominique Chicken, in the thumbnail. Great breed of chicken. Oldest breed in America, very docile, great forager, dual purpose. I have 7 of them.👍😁
Who does this music? It is outstanding! Here in Virginia (and many places in the South) a willow branch will root and grow if inserted into the soil and kept wet enough (summer rain is often enough) and the wattle fence willow "posts" will grow and eventually have to be thinned, which can be used to replace older horizontal wattle stands.
That's how they do them in England!
The music in the background is by jim's red pants, you can find them on spotify
I cant get anything to sprout here. I planted raspberry sprouts which should have rooted but none did. (I keep the ground wet).
@@dreamwalker2518 Thanks!
@@dreamwalker2518 I'm so glad I looked at this thread 😆 I am following it now.
A big chicken basket with fries and coleslaw sounds amazing....
There's a house near my son's old school that has a lovely wattle fence sectioning off the part of the front yard closest to the house from the rest. It has an archway with a gate all made from more wattling. I will sometimes go out of my way to go past it.
And that was a very nice little Barred Rock pullet sitting on your lap at the end, Jon. I love the gentle chirps the younglings make.
Wattle fence is not only practical but beautiful! You can make short ones for a low garden edging. (On my list of things to do!😉)
@@amysbees6686
Be careful what you choose to do it with! When we first moved in, I cleared out the line of forsythia bushes in the chosen area for a garden. I made low wattle fencing (8-10") around the new garden beds using the cut forsythia branches. I didn't expect it to last more than a year or so. The weavers broke down as expected, but the uprights took root! So more forsythia eradication needed.🤣
I'm not so sure this is great for chickens. Maybe pigs or something of that nature. My chickens flew 8 feet straight up into the rafters of their coop to sleep at night, certainly would have no trouble hopping a fence. Plus, they reliably return to a coop to sleep if left free to wander. Predators are going to be a problem also. I had to bury chicken wire 12" underground to stop raccoons from digging in. They would kill a dozen chickens in a night when they had the chance. Wouldn't even eat them, just kill as many as they could. Looks like you have a box there to lock them in at night which is good. I don't know how you would protect them at night in a period accurate way except to have a guard dog. I'd be interested if they used other techniques.
My grandma swore by planting thorny plants such as rose bushes and stinging nettles to discourage uninvited critters but each area is different
Sadly, I think you are correct. They'll probably be atop the fence before you know it. I'd love to know how they handled that back in the day.
Just clip the wing feathers and they can't fly over the fence. As for predators, the birds will roost in the coop at night. Just close the coop up after dark and open it in the morning.
You don’t just leave your chickens wandering loose in a pen at night- you always put them away in the coop, chicken house or a stall/ section of the barn. Everyone on the frontier would have had at least a couple horses or mules, and likely a few other livestock. You at least put the chickens away in a small coop or shed at night, else there’s no point to having chickens because you won’t have them long. Yes, if you want adult chickens to stay in the pen you clip their wings- but most of the time they can roam about the clearing safely in the daytime, especially if there are people and a watchdog outside. The pen would be good for chicks as they are learning to be outdoors and not wander away.
My chickens would fly the coop as well. I reminder my husband that the fence needed a roof to protect them from hawks during the day and to keep them in their fenced in area. The girls were always put up at night.
There was one day I came from work early to find the door wide open. Apparently the door wasn't latched closed and the wind blew it open. After searching the house, I went back to the dining room and found 4 of my chickens having a wonderful time.
There was never a dull moment with those girls.
I was out walking today and noticed a bumper crop of hickory nuts around. It brought to mind a possibility for a subject for your channel. Pawcohiccora is a porridge made from hickory nuts by the Algonquin Indians.
Coppicing is a very ancient practice, and one that we should all look into bringing back where we can. As shown here, the wood produced is a great resource. In Europe before "the war", woodsmen tended the wild places not because they were "environmentalists" but because the woods provided gobs of materials that were used to make things for the homes around the woods. Bodgers were men who'd go out, cut wood, and turn it into bowls, troughs, buckets, chairs, cabinets, fences, hurdles, etc. In short, it was local craftsmen providing goods and services for local customers. And that's what built great communities that had a culture specific to their location.
People drove the Bodgers out, basically, because they didn't think about the 2nd Order Effects of decisions they made - like supporting a new tax or regulation. Folks didn't think about how those things impact the small businesses, always adding up and driving up the costs of doing business.
Today, coppicing and pollarding is still done, but not on the scale it used to be. The result is that our wild lands are in worse health and prone to disease. Using the wood for more than fires in the winter is critical to bringing back the healthy status of the property, and often that means we have to go the "harder" way of doing something. Putting up some mass-produced wire fencing might seem cheaper and easier, but the 2nd Order Effects are costly, indeed!
Plus, the woven fence adds character and a rugged elegance to the property. I'd encourage folks to look up "bodger" on instagram or here on youtube to get a sense of just what beauty can be brought to the world with simple tools and a bit of generational knowledge.
I got backyard chickens during the first Covid lockdown and now I'm obsessed. I was recently telling someone my fantasy job would be a chicken history interpreter at someplace like Colonial Williamsburg. And then Iearned that's actually a real job. I need to move to VA.
An interesting thing is oaks will do what ash would. In Japan, they have a practice of harvesting oak, where they leave an oak stump handy for a few years, then cut down what sprouts from it.
I think that is called "pollarding", by the old europeans.
I like how the chicken at the end matched Jon's shirt.
I like how it checked him for bugs.
I like how Jon decided to do the closing monologue with a little chicken sidekick.
In Northern VA we have this “devil” of a tree called the locust. When young it has great thorns and it’s flexible. Somewhat. Good for fencing if you want but mostly it’s annoying. Once grown and matured it virtually indestructible. Black locust for fence posts will outlast a generation I think.
When they're old they have thorns too. They were the bane of my dad's existence. In our area, they shoot up quickly but only live 10 or 15 years, then die and rot from the top. Those spikey branches blow down in storms. They have a beautiful, sweet-smelling cream bunch of flowers that bloom in the spring.
Locust will last.
Depending on where you are there is also Osage.
Another thorny tree known for its rot resistance. (also known as Hedge)
Hedge posts last a long time.
As a side note because I want to be manly I tried to fell a locust using a good and sharp ax. I’m not sure who won that battle. My shoulders gave out. The ax edge gave out. Eventually the locust gave out. Thank goodness that I am a home brewer. The beer replenished.
@@qgc3426 Black locust is probably one of the hottest firewoods you will ever get.
It may not have the total BTU's of hickory, but it will get your stove glowing and melt the grates if you're not careful.
Ok so I’m going to impose my thought onto this thread which are not relevant to it. Since I may perhaps gotten your ear. How about a series documenting roads and byways. You made a homestead. How about explaining how the routes were made between such back in that time. Were they well worn paths or did they need help? Franklin surveyed the first route I think but the road infrastructure to me is fascinating.
This might be a bit anecdotal, but from where my farming family came from in Southern England, the woven mobile panels used for livestock pens were called "Waddles". When they came to Australia in the late eighteenth century, they constructed them from the local trees that we know call Wattyls (Acacia). Might be a coincidence, but a Waddle and a Wattyl sound pretty similar.
They named the tree after the type of material it was initially used for- wattle. It's fairly common in colonised places.
Good afternoon from Syracuse NY everyone thank you for sharing living history
Hello from over in Pine City NY! Have you learned any living history skills/practices? I keep chickens and ducks myself :)
Yes I have a garden and I am a hunter and fisherman and a 1754 survival camping skills teacher
That is very cool! When do you do classes? I might actually be interested
I'm a leader in the Royal Rangers ministry in my church on Fay RD. Syracuse NY. We have a 1754 re-enactment group which is part of the Royal Rangers ministry.
Aaah a re-enactment group! That explains the specific year. It doesn't seem like something I'd want to join, but it is always good to see people passing on those types of skills :)
This channel never disappoints 👍👍
Houses thru the ages were made this way.
A very satisfying fence built.
Looks great, too...
You are giving us a blueprint for going off grid and surviving what is to come , thank uou.
lol
@Uncle Charlie if society collapses, power plants fail, and nuclear weapons are raining down, a chicken coop won't matter at all. This prepping stuff is a fantasy for a specific type of nerd, but the best thing you could do would be build a bomb shelter and pack it with food and seeds, but even that is extremely dubious. Hey, if you want to support local contractors, go for it, they would appreciate the business.
Love how your homestead is coming together. Life was much harder back then but I believe it was much simpler. After all the crazy hub bub of life now your programs always make me homesick for a simpler life, even if the work was harder. Thank you for the peace your programs bring. God Bless you and all your help.❤🇺🇸❤🇺🇸❤
I love your outfit! You could wear that today and be stylish as heck.
So soothing to watch. So much knowledge of nature
Those chickens are going to churn that little pen into a muck pit so fast lol.
It's a lot more work and materials, but if you're capable of it a series of pens that size wrapping around the coop that you can rotate the chickens to once a week or so is a lot better for them.
Saves on feed too since they are able to forage without scorching the earth in their enclosure lol
Reminds me of the Tudor Monastery series when Tom and Peter had to build fencing for their pigs.
Love that series!
Yeah, love that series... all the series of different eras. Not a fan of Tom though, I would have preferred Alex to be in that one as well. Ruth, Peter, and Alex are a great team.
@@kellywhite9299 Tom was great in Secrets of the Castle though because he brought in a bunch of the military history. So if you want to see Ruth make armor and the boys play with crossbows and catapults, not bad!
I loved the Wartime Farm series where the WWI-era farmers were cut off from exports and had to research medieval ways to make their farm happen
Oh My Gosh, John looks SO CUTE with that little gray bird sitting on his knee! Just so adorable!
I think Mom called hers "Domineckers"...
Bared Plymouth Rocks, one of the best dual purpose heritage breeds of chickens around. We have 4 in our flock
You guys are really blessed with a great property. So fun to watch you add on capability to your homestead. I can't imagine the behind the scenes issues you had to deal with -- building permits? Safety inspections? Another superbly made, entertaining and educational video. THANK YOU!!!
as long as whatever you build doesn't have a concrete foundation, you can label the structures on your land as "Non permanent" and you don't need any permits to keep them.
Our kids just finished their second year raising chickens for 4-h.
Nice!
Petition for chicken Livestream! Love your content Townsends your whole team is top notch!
Where I'm from , some fishemen still use wattle fences to guide eels into their traps.
It's a dying art, though.
take 2 wattle fences and pile rocks in between..and you have a gabion wall...very common when you needed a wall, but couldn't build a proper stone wall. the stones came from when you plowed to plant.
So much work went into this, it’s amazing to see the passion you have.
Wood for bows back in England was farmed by coppicing trees so they create huge thickets of straight branches. There was a tremendous amount of forest management that took place during the Middle Ages because of how valuable the resources in them was to life back then.
Really like this one. I love chickens and miss keeping some. The last coop I built had a small "chicken" gate that could be opened into the garden. Great for having the birds keep the insect pests down. You've never seen violence, I hope, like that of several hens going after tomato hornworms. Wow. But you do have to keep an eye on them. After they have exhausted the bug population they go after your veggies and you have to push them out of the garden. Back to egg laying!
I made my deer blind last year by building it as a wattle type fence, but I put the branches closer together to make it harder to see through and then I used pine boughs to fill in for concealment so you couldn't see into it at all. It worked very well and didn't cost me a dime because I had to cut the brush down anyway to see where I wanted to hunt on the property.
If I may make a suggestion. When making the point, try holding the post at an angle, and swinging the axe straight up and down. I think you will have fewer glancing blows that way.
I'd suggest using a hammer, those axe glancing blows look very scary.
Something I love about wattle and other sorts of similar material is how universal it is in places where the local flora support it. The site of a chicken coop with a wattle fence could be just as familiar to say a Norse settler in Yorkshire as a British settler in the new world, or even an iron age farmer in their hillfort.
My next door neighbour has chickens. I suddenly wish we had an ash grove to make my own coop.
Sooooo when is the garden going in? I have quite the passion for historical varieties of vegetables, particularly corn, beans, and squash.
Here a protip.... get yourself a goose and raise it up with the next batch of chicks. The goose will alert the chickens to aerial threats and your fence will keep out the larger predaters.
Living the dream, brother! May God keep blessing you and your family for your hard work.
Watching all these videos for my eventual homestead in the remote wilderness. Very insightful, even able to recreate smaller versions in my living room.
Seems like you have additional hands on the homestead that are appearing more regularly. I hope for more character development in the future :)
100% this. Seems like they have their own 18th century stories to tell!
Thank you! My grandparents did something like this when I was a little kid but they used sassafras. Can still remember the smell. God Bless and stay safe.
Simply fantastic. This is the first I've heard about ash trees re-growing. I'm delighted to hear that. Do everything you can to protect your chickens from foxes. I used to help raise some quail only to learn after I stopped, a fox snuck in and annihilated every one of them.
I grew up on a small holding poultry farm, about 50 laying hens at the best of times. What a fantastic episode to watch and reminiscence over dinner with. Thanks
It's so wonderful to see young folks helping and learning. Great fence! I run cord across the top of my run and weave it into a pattern that is close enough to keep hawks out. The openings are about 2 foot square.
I build a small - knee high fence to keep ducks out of the vege patch last summer. Used oak of all things for posts and nearby roadside thicket had long straight thin oak. Then whatever I could find for the weaving. Fortunately some hazels at my place could be thinned, but also used water shoots from plums, quinces and other fruit trees, and collected a bunch of alder wood from a nearby river verge. It is intuitive and highly enjoyable. Love how it curves and makes natural shapes easily.
Making a really really big chicken basket.
The only time I've heard of chickens and baskets is when they're cooked and served in a basket with chips (French fries for the American viewers).
I bet a ton of preppers have joined this channel in the last 2 years, a lot of skills ppl may need in future.
it's a good channel for prepping. If the world falls apart, we may return to the pre-industrial age, but there's no reason to fall back to the stone age. An 18th-19th century lifestyle is completely achievable even if all of our infrastructure fails, factories and power plants become inoperable, etc. There are no prerequisites for this lifestyle other than knowledge.
@@AngryAlfonse If some calamity so terrible occurs that all infrastructure, powerplants etc fail, you will have much bigger concerns than making a chicken coop.
@@EMCF_ correct. Those concerns would be food, water, and shelter. Then down the road when the initial calamity is over and people are trying to figure out how to survive long term, the concerns will be long term food, water and shelter. Chickens fall into the whole "long term food" part.
2 years you mean 6. But I’ve been watching for about 7.
I love how many useful prepping projects come from your channel ❤️
This is definitely something worth taking note of!!
I was so happy when you mentioned Coppicing and Pollarding i don't know when the practice died out, but for cooking fires and such where sticks are so handy. im really surprised that the idea is not used more.
I've seen these built in Europe, as well as living walls\property boundaries built using young trees. Really interesting how well it works.
Do you mean a proper laid hedge with Hawthorne or blackthorn? Do people not lay hedges in America?
At least here in Britain, Hazel fencing has been used for millennia. It's more often used in bushcraft nowadays, but still a great alternative to stock fencing if you have the time and effort to build it.
@@johnstevenson1709
Not really in the same way as in Europe.
Colonial America used wattle and also stones to create fences, and we do use some bushes (usually some sort of evergreen) to create hedges, but we don't interweave living trees and bushes to create hedge rows.
Thank u soooo much! I just moved onto my five acres of raw land three days ago and this is gonna help me so much for fencing in goats as well as another for chickens yaaaay
Thank you for sharing. Love learning about how people lived in the past. Would you consider doing a video on how people fed their livestock in the 18th century?
Would be nice to see it taken next level with some mulberry trees planted around to give the chickens free forage.
Plus mulberry also grows little bunches of flexible branches everywhere it's cut. Completely natural coppicing. But nah, the chickens will have plenty of mosquitoes and flies to eat being that close to the pond.
If you have mulberry trees you can make silk because the silk worms eat mulberry leaves. Women in the US made their own silk in the 18th and 19th century in this way.
The great thing with ash coppice is that it produces brilliantly sizes firewood that is easy to manage and doesn't require splitting. Cut on a short cycle (7 to 12 years) you can produce an endless log supply. An ash stool (stoll being the word for a coppiced stump) will live for several centuries. Some of the oldest British trees are coppice stools - they become huge.
Was great to see overall view of the homestead and know how various episodes fit into the big picture. Love the 'behind the scenes' videos. Thank you!
I helped my grandpa build a wattle fence just like this. All wattle fences are built without corners if possible because they are stronger than corners .
Do a daube and wattle wall for the actual chicken house… I rather fight a bear…
Loved the opening shot panning around all the projects, looked great.
I started a project like this this spring. it's surprising how many sticks it takes.... it's an enormous undertaking. bring friends if your start making one.
Black locust wood posts are what my grandfather used. They resist rotting and last forever, are a hard wood that grows quickly. Great for erosion control. And permaculture for revitalizing land. The black willow can be cut to grow dense coppices for the wattle the bark has the same base as used in aspirin and makes excellent charcoal for black powder for your flintlocks.
When we were working on the attic of a log cabin from the 1800's (they slid it up a hill for the main part of the house and built onto it from there), We started taking off the interior 'stucco' on the walls to find they'd crisscrossed willows (lattice) and just applied the stucco material over that and painted and wallpapered over it. It was a dusty mess to take out, but we got it done. You build with what you have. It took a lot of work to rid the ditch-banks of the willows, in order to get the irrigation water flowing freely again.
Great video. Its good to see that Ash trees are growing despite all their current set backs.
That is something I'd like to make for my garden! Love the chickens too
That is so cool. I have wanted to do a wattle fence as screen for years on part of our backyard... now i just might!
A big chicken basket. Hummmm, that makes me hungry. Lol!!!
Excellent job guys!
Next, could you show us how settlers would make pens, or cribs for their bigger livestock like cattle and horses.
Thanks for all you do!!!
These are very interesting.
Waddle fences that were well built and anchored have been used to contain pigs, sheep and cattle.
If you want to make a shelter, use wattle for walls and cover them with daub. Roof it over with pine boughs or even thatching.
All for free, made with materials harvested from your own homestead.
Keep adding on to your homestead property and i’m sure school/scout groups are going to start asking to come by and see it. Impressive historical setup.
As a life-long chicken keeper, this really intrigues me! I have to do this sometime!
The chicken house is just about the same proportions as the one I built in my back yard, 6' wide x 8' long, 8' high on one side and 4' high on the other.
I would close in around the bottom of the coop though. Knowing chickens, they'll figure out a way to go under there... and then you'll wonder why they aren't laying as many eggs as they used to. And you can't get under there to get the eggs!
Very nice - the chickens look happy. Basswood also thrive in their ability to coppice.
Livestock you say!? What about bees!? Fun fact we bought some knives from you for our kitchen and our sharpening guy loves them!! Fabulous fence. The chickens have a beautiful home. Nice woof too!
That's a mighty fine chicken basket y'all have there.
ive always wanted to put a fence like this up before, but i was always kind of intimidated by the idea...but seeing you do it, made me realize its actually a fairly simple process. thank you
Here in the Philippines the farmers usually use Madre de cacao/Kakawate for fencing because the branches readily grow roots and then you have a live wall, with the bonus of the leaves being great livestock feed (for goats usually)
That's an awesome looking giant chicken basket. Simply Gorgeous. ❤❤❤❤❤
I have made some amazing things with weaping willow branches. They are the trees that never stop giving.
I've been wanting to do wattle fencing for our garden and around our trees. Thank you for showing what type of trees are good to use. The homestead is shaping up nicely. I can't wait to see what you guys do next.
That is amazing. Well done, sir.
Guinea fowl help keep the ticks away. Ducks for the garden bugs. A chicken can lay an egg a day. Very handy animals.
Don't forget geese.
Very aggressive against intruders!
Amazing. I was not expecting a chicken coop. You guys never fail to surprise and delight.
If you had poplar in your area, I would imagine that that would work out well for fencing material for the chickens. This was another awesome video. Cheers! ✌️
It is an awesome video indeed!
@@rosemcguinn5301 It was. Cheers, Rose!
Here is a video idea. You should talk about the prosthetics that the people used during that time and maybe make some of your own with your tools.
I think they just died
@@bradlauk1419 Nah mate. Early prosthetics were seen as big advances in science.
I am really enjoying this series and hope you will consult mister Drew Conroy for information on working oxen on the homestead in the near future. This is something I really want to get into and learn more about.
Looks fantastic! Love watching the homestead come together. Those chickens 🐓 are pretty lucky 🍀
I have been waiting to learn about this area. Thank you. I look forward to more.
As always another great video always happy to see what’s happening on the homestead
So much hard work! I appreciate your dedication to sharing this time of life.
Your little Dominecker is just like ours: inquistive and very friendly. Ours like to sit on us too. They are actually historically accurate, Washington and Lincoln both kept them. The New Hampshires (or Rhodies) and Buff Orpingtons are both later, I believe. Thanks for the fencing info, I'm going to store that away in case I ever need it. That could come in handy.
Thank you Thirza, I was wondering what breed of chickens those were and whether they were around in the 18th century. And yes, you're right. Orpingtons are from the late 19th century. Up here in the northern plains Orpingtons are one of the most preferred breeds for hobbyist and small farm chicken production. Good for eggs or meat, and they are one of the best at handling the cold. Smart too, if you're in an area where predators aren't a problem they'll pretty much look after themselves from spring through fall. I couldn't raise chickens though, if I bought 10 chickens for eggs and meat what I'd end up with is 10 pets. Odd too, since I grew up on a farm you'd think it wouldn't be a big deal to raise chickens for meat, but like you say, they're inquisitive and friendly.