Introducing...

(Fanfare)... The Produce Facility.. (fade fanfare)

We bought FSF (so named due to the chorus of frogs singing one day whilst considering whether or not to purchase) with the idea that we'd like to be as self sufficient as is possible in this day and age without working ourselves to death.

Ray (the ideas and infrastructure man - also very cute with brown teddy bear eyes) designed our Produce Facility (aka "the pen") to be a self-contained food production area, fully enclosed and protected from predators. Within the pen we will eventually have our chickens, fruit trees, vegetable gardens and four aquaponics systems.

It is a 20x20x3m chain meshed square which will be divided into four sections, thereby allowing us to rotate the chickens for their excellent weed eating and fertilising abilities. In order to keep predators out Ray's mate Russell (Heckle) brought his dingo around and dug a 1m trench into which Ray (Jeckle) put the posts and chain mesh. We're pretty sure that nothing will be keen enough to dig 1m down through chain mesh to get to our chooks! After connecting the rails and mesh it began to look very much like a weird tennis court, or as some said to us, "is that the new Ararat Prison?" Along the bottom and also dropped into the trench is snake netting which is in the process of being attached to the mesh.. still. Once we have finished all the lacing and attaching of mesh and netting, and backfilling all the trenches the fun will really begin. The roof. I don't even want to think about that yet! Once finished the idea is that nothing other than the tiny birds who will of course want to eat all the buggies on our plants will be able to get in. Hallelujah!

More pictures of the pen to follow..