Goat Trough Turned Planter

I have it my head that I must build a goat trough.  They fight too much over the purple hanging bucket. 

In the unutilized greenhouse, I unloaded some wood that hubby got from work a while back when they tore apart a large crate.  It has been stored in there just waiting for me to get the gumption to do something with it.  Today is the day.

Let's face it, I have no carpentry skills at all!  My nails always go in crooked and I spend most of my "working" time trying to straighten the nails.  That is why I have not attempted to build anything. 
But you know what, I never will if I don't even start.  So, I did.

I carried the circular saw, the handsaw (just in case), a crappy hammer, too-big nails and a tape measure to the greenhouse.  Daughter came down to hang out with me (of course, she helped too).

We began by prying out the dozens of staples.  Really, is it necessary to have 30 staples per board?  Were they shipping elephants in the crates?  We got the staples out of the middle and one end.  The other end we just cut off to make the boards close to the same length.  I did bring a tape measure, but didn't really use it. 

I ran back into the house to get a red pencil to mark where I wanted to pre-drill for the too-big nails.  Yes, even though I didn't have what I really needed to make a goat trough good, I just wanted to get it going, taking mental notes along the way.  (I have many pages of mental notes...)

After getting all the holes pre-drilled, we began construction.  Too-big nails + too-small boards = way too small for a goat trough, not to mention that some of my handy-dandy hammering left a few nails sticking out of the back side and one on the front!  Errr! That's okay.  I know now that I need a wider board for the bottom and I need smaller nails for the sides, and I could use the "measure twice, cut once" banner above my work table.  I used the ends that I cut off for the ends of trough, and this is where a little better planning and measuring would have come in handy.   But all in all, it was okay...for a planter.  I don't believe the chickens, let alone the goats could get their big old gourds in there.  I could, however, grow some decent size carrots or beets in there, along with cool weather crops like lettuce, radishes and chard. 

 

 

 

So, I will take my goat trough planter and spruce it up a bit with some fun colors on the outside and put some veggies on the inside for now.  If it lasts through the winter, I will plant colorful flowers or something a little more fun in it.  Worse comes to worst, I could plant wheatgrass and other fodder for the goats, making it sort of a goat trough...

So back to the drawing board.  I think my second attempt will be better; goodness, I hope so!