Yes, Roberta, it was reg upon reg, for better or worse, that eventually forced my parents out of their farming livelihood. At middle age, with no formal education they were forced to find city jobs (or move and rebuild the barn etc. etc. etc.). Unfortunately, their story is not unique. I'd love to see a documentary of the saga during this era - but the window is closing. I do have one question related to your comment though, before this thread folds completely. Our pullets aren't laying yet - though one of them jumps into the raised nest box and stirs it up good daily, so it shouldn't be too far off. Our ducks ARE laying however - but their nest box isn't so clean. I'm wondering if the tidy habits chickens keep goes for ducks also...If so, perhaps one of the drakes or the pullets are messing in it. It's ground level and doesn't belong to the pullets (paybacks?). Anyway, I have to tidy it up for them each morning. -lf

I have a room in my house that is very drafty and if I let it stay cold it keeps the rest of the house cold. I brought this heater from Target last year, I keep it on 24/7 on a low temp and after about a day running it has kept the room comfortable although not real warm. If I turn it up it will be smokey hot in there which I did not want to do. It has solved the problem. I checked my light bull and it did not change significantly over the year. I am wondering if this might be a solution for you? You are in zone 7 like I am and I have had no need for supplemental heat outside yet and my birds seem to be doing fine. Their whole pen is made of wire mesh with a box for them to go in at night. The temp has gotten pretty low and when it did the chickens stayed in their box huddled together for a while but for the most part they were business as usual. I did close their box on really cold nights though to keep out the drafts. HTH Here is a link that might be useful: heater

Thanks. I think getting the wires up out of the way would be the easiest way of getting things tidied up. Without having any of the telephone splice connectors, I don't think I could move the wires into a J-box, unless one end is easily removable from the junction block. I was thinking about a junction box because I did the very same thing about a week ago when I moved all of my thermostat wiring splices (I have three boilers in the basement) into a J-box. The splices are where the old thermostat wiring ties into the new near-boiler wiring. It really neatened things up overhead around the boilers. The splitters you see are all 3-way splitters if I'm not mistaken. I have about 5 or 6 in the basement, and there is one outside which is grounded to a stake in the ground. The coax is quite new. I believe most of it is only 5 years old or so. Cox came and ran all new wires when someone had an issue with their cable modem due to a poor signal. They didn't do the nicest job at keeping it neat and organized, but coax is easy enough to work with; disconnect it, re-route it, and reconnect it... The rest of the old coax (black in color) is running up the sides of the house to get to the 2nd and 3rd floors. The first floor wires run up through the floor, and the 2nd and 3rd floor run straight through the exterior walls. Perhaps someday I'll complain to Cox about the wires hitting the siding when it's windy and have it all replaced with new, white cable to match the white vinyl siding. Also, I made a mistake when I said telephone "protectors" outside. I checked yesterday, and I have only one protector where all three main black telephone lines go through into the house. I would've thought each floor had it's own protector box outside...

When we first moved into our house, the kitchen cabinets had fabric inserts (just in the upper cabinets). They didn't have chicken wire or glass. The fabric had been in there many years and was faded, so I wanted to make new inserts. I bought several different small pieces of fabric and tucked them into the cabinets for a couple weeks. It looked funny with all the different patterns, but it was a good way to audition the fabrics and decide what I really wanted. I chose a dark green fabric that had a tiny white print on it. (One of the fabrics I considered was an ivory background with a blue print of chicken wire on it!) We remodeled the kitchen in 2004, and we no longer have the cabinets, but here's a couple photos of them when they were being stored in the basement: And when they were still in place: These cabinets were handmade, so they may have been put together differently than yours are. But basically, the cabinet door was just a frame, with no glass. The fabric had a "rod" pocket at both top and bottom and was shirred onto a thin, narrow piece of wood. The wood was nailed into the cabinet frame, using very tiny nails. I had to carefully remove the nails and wood "slats" when I redid the fabric.