First Place, South Region
Bryan Creech
Knoxville, TN

Bryan Creech said, "My children wanted our family to have a few chickens."

And Bryan wanted to teach his children the value of hard work. He and his wife
decided a small farm setting would work best, and set out to build a small chicken house.

Bryan put his dream on paper first, just sketching the house out on graph paper. Bryan called upon a friend from church to help with the center trusses, since this was his first-ever building project.

The entire building concept was similar to a pole shed, built on treated 4x4 posts. Bryan used a mixture of recycled lumber for headers, then wrapped it all up in poplar. Bryan created the outside rafters by himself. He installed a wall in the center of the 160-square-foot structure, to separate the chickens from the turkeys.

The Wood-Mizer sawmill used on this project is not owned by Bryan, but his friend Terry Atkins. Together, they made Bryan's kids very happy.

"My son prays nearly daily that one day we can get a Wood-Mizer to cut our own trees."