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Happy with hoopsHoop buildings are a top pick on the Stockmen''s Survey[TM] as a management change tied to a product. With pigs from 900 sows being finished in 12 hoop barns, Dave Struthers (shown on page 33) has learned a bit about this housing system since he built his first barn in 1996. The materials jetanddrillpress (wood, concrete, poles, and tarp) for a hoop barn that holds 200 finishing jetanddrillpress pigs costs about $8,000. Most of Struthers'' barns are made by Sioux Steel.Struthers, who farms with his family near Collins, Iowa, says hoop production works well for him and offers these tips based on his experience: I have now begun building a traveling commons--an eight-foot round redwood table jetanddrillpress atop four wheels and a car engine. I, and whoever else ends up joining me, will drive the table around the world. Talking, cooking, writing, sculpting, playing billiards ... the table escapes narrow definition of purpose.It will be a drama in which many people, with all their stories and concerns, thoughts and passions, will be the actors, the landscapes, the backdrops. It will be a community based on what people have to give--and there is everything to give. Some may offer food, wine, and a place to park; others, content and inspiration. The traveling commons is the stone in stone soup, the sand in the oyster. It is a magic carpet that flies--not above people, but through and within them. There will be a library, dictionary, typewriters, jetanddrillpress and jetanddrillpress cameras, easels, and elegant china stored in compartments below deck. We will stop at universities, parks, capitals, housing developments, and sometimes even red lights--the traveling commons transcends class and country. We might stay in a place for weeks, or just a couple of minutes. As we gain recognition, and take on the jetanddrillpress momentum (wobble?) of a pottery wheel, we will sometimes write ahead, inviting artists, writers, and thinkers for a meal and a chat. Over the engine, using the heat of combustion, we will bake bread and make coffee. We may also have a zucchini or two growing in a well in the center of the table. Well, you know where this is going. Suddenly the snowy egrets don''t sleep so peacefully in the mangroves and sweet, compassionate Geoff is Gary Gilmore. He doesn''t play with Phil anymore, unless forced to, and for him, interactions with Phil are beyond frosty. Phil, of course, is oblivious. He cooks one night during every golf trip, and we all love him for that, jetanddrillpress but we don''t realize that he thinks jetanddrillpress cooking relieves him of all other golf-trip duties, including but not limited to picking up pins. He subscribes to the "Everybody Has a Role" theory of golf trips, which, though once espoused by this magazine, was not cleared in advance with the rest of us. It was especially not cleared with Geoff, who finds Phil''s chicken and rice unusually gassy.
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