One of the persistent challenges for our type of farming is maintaining some organization in the chaos of tools and supplies. Everyone who knows me knows that I’ve never been good at keeping things tidy. My workshop is a disaster. But I’ve made a baby step of improvement, and just that incremental difference makes me feel like there’s hope for future improvements.
About a month ago I tackled the fencing supplies. This includes a half dozen spools of wire, spinning jennys, insulators, staples, tensioners, and an assortment of both common and specialized tools. This collection took up a large shelf plus several overflowing totes on the floor, roughly about a 4×6 footprint in the garage. Not only was the collection unwieldy, but it required a lot of time and effort to carry everything into the back of the truck whenever I was doing fencing work. And it seemed that whenever I was out doing a fence installation or repair job, I’d discover I was missing a tool.
I realized the solution to my storage, organization, and accessibility problems could be found by building a small shed capable of storing my entire fencing collection and all the basic tools. It is mounted on a pallet so I can move the entire unit with the tractor out to whatever location I’m working. If I need to leave a job halfway done, all the supplies can remain in the field without fear of rain or snow. And I can reclaim that little corner of the garage shop space.
I’ve been amazed at the improvements made by such a small change. I don’t dread doing fencing repairs anymore. It is making me wonder what other sorts of modular project pallets I should build next. A pallet for masonry supplies and another for forestry seem like good candidates. Whatever I end up doing, I’ve been encouraged by taking a small action against what felt like intractable project clutter. There is hope!
6 thoughts on “The Fencing Project Pallet”
Nice work. Pallets make convenient starting points. If you anticipate anything bulky living in the portable shed, in my experience going “extra wide” works most of the time, so long as the side hill driving isn’t too steeep and the load center of gravity can be pulled in low. As you may infer from my comment so far, I’ve learned this the hard way.
Right. I figured the spools of wire make pretty good ballast at the bottom layer with lightweight stuff up on the top shelf. But there are some side hills that might challenge any pallet-based structure.
Also, anticipating other “learned the hard way” lessons, I made the pallet easily removable for replacement because eventually I’m sure I’ll skewer it with the forks.
this is great!
the way that I dealt with that issue was to get 4 different over the shoulder bags for my different classes of tools. Fencing, water system, animal health, and general tools populate each bag. Has worked pretty well. I cant carry everything into the field, but i can generally deal with most issues.
I like that idea. Especially for water systems. There’s always something broken or in need of tightening.
Great idea and one that I may well borrow!
I’d like to see what you come up with Phil.