Thursday, September 18, 2014

BERRY BARN, INSPIRATION THURSDAY


Berry Barn project, image courtesy of Kylee Baumle over at OUR LITTLE ACRE
Recently, I was blog hopping, as I like to do, and was over at Our Little Acre (link above) and I found the neatest thing when I was there.  Kylee (gardener extraordinaire) and her husband came up with a novel, and beautiful, solution to keeping their berries from being eaten by birds, rabbits and whatever else might be lurking about in the yard, waiting for a sweet snack.


Her beautiful property has some raspberries, blackberries and even blueberries.  Like many of us who have the best hopes for our berries, she fought the good fight against the furry and feathered marauders.  What they came up with was to build a frame structure of sorts around their berry beds and then cover it in chicken wire.  Think of a greenhouse, only without the glass/plastic panels...genius if you ask me!  She calls it "The Berry Barn".  Of course, we didn't need one more project to put on the list but hey, this one is almost too cool not to have on our list.  I'm not sure I could get ours to look as good as theirs, but it looks possible, someday anyway.  

Click either the photo itself, or the hyperlink above, to go to directly to the page on her blog that shows more of the photos of the construction process.

I immediately wrote to her and asked if she would allow me to share her project and she agreed.  Thank you Kylee, you've definitely inspired us!

Be Inspired!

© September 2014
by 1st Man at twomenandalittlefarm.com

28 comments:

  1. A fruit cage is one of those things that's way up close to the top of my must-have lists if I ever get my own place. Especially after having seen the lengths my sister used to have to go to to try and save even just a few cherries from the birds. That's a nice looking one, too.

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    1. It sure is a nice looking one. I wish I could do it as easily as they made it look but someday I'll give it my best shot. We have rabbits all over the place out at the farm so we would definitely need something like this to protect any berries we might plant.

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  2. That's a great idea! And so well-made. Very ingenious of Kylee.
    You could put a roof framework over your garden, add chicken wire - and there's yours. Even your tomatoes would be safe!

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    1. Wow, you brought up a good point. With the fence all the way around, some sort of cover COULD be done someday. Of course short term I think we could surround each raised bed with something too. I love the idea Kylee came up with, so neat.

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  3. That is a neat idea. I have seen something similar read ago at Oatlands - a historic property in Leesburg, VA. It was like a cage for the blueberries.

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    1. I bet that was fun to see. Neat that some historic place had something similar. Sometimes the old ideas are the best ones aren't they?

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  4. Replies
    1. Wow, how cool is that? I think you need one. Teddy would love it. :-)

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  5. That is SO awesome! She (and Mr. Hubby) did a bang up job.

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    1. Ha, she will be glad to hear that. Thanks for commenting!

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  6. holy crap that's a beauty, I want one I want one, hahaha.

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  7. I'm with Mary Ann, what a clever solution to the problem. You know I saw this one and thought someone was building a greenhouse. Then I never saw panels in it and thought they just ran out of time or money. Looking back, it could have had chicken wire and from the road I couldn't see it. Go figure.

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    1. Oops I meant 'I saw this ONCE' near where I live. Not this ONE, ha.

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    2. I was just replying to comments, I'm glad you clarified, I was going to say "wow, you saw it in person?", ha. I hear what you mean, you saw something once like that and thought it was an incomplete greenhouse. Makes sense to me.

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  8. Replies
    1. Or perhaps, building brilliantly better berry barns! HA!!!

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  9. I was thinking Berry Cage but I like Berry Barn better. BBB! Bwahaha

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    1. BBB! Too funny! Yeah, when I saw it I thought it's like a giant berry cage but berry barn has a great ring to it. :-)

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  10. This would make a great chicken run as well! Attractive and functional - keep out ground critters and hawks! Just pop a chicken house either inside, or attach it to the back end, and voila! :)

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    1. It would wouldn't it? I like the idea of a chicken house at either end. It's a great design for a variety of uses. That's probably what also appealed to us, ha.

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  11. In the uk, we have two different sizes of chicken wire, regular and small. I hope they have used small. We have a normal pole and netting berry cage. We had a 1" gap at the top, same size as regular wire. The sparrows soon found their way in, had to block it off!

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    1. On her blog the close up pictures look like the small chicken wire. And those sparrows are persistent birds aren't they? HA!

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  12. Wow that is just so neat. She did great with that. I would have never thought of that but it is such a great solution. Now I'm off to her blog to check it out.

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    1. I'm sure she will be glad to hear. It really is a great solution. As I've said, I've seen cages over plants or small beds, but this one just really caught my eye. And best of all, it can watered from the outside (and of course rained on, ha). I hope she gets some great berry harvests!!

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