Before I knew about or found this board.

The first year, I kept the gravity box in the granary, It stay dry. Not much snow got in there. The two cats each sat on a wheel of the gravity box to pick off mice when they came in for spilled corn. The cats got fat, the mice got ate, hauling corn may have built my muscles a little. But not near as much as shoveling a path over 90 yards when the snow started to get deep.

The second year, I parked the gravity box just outside the basement door. This was nice, just carry buckets of corn in as needed. The cats still parked on the wheels and ate mice. But getting corn still meant on most days putting on a coat. And my blonde 16 year old daughter decided to surprise us and bring in corn wearing just a tee shirt, gym shorts and slippers one nice cold Jan night (about -15, no wind) locked herself out of the house and had to plow through snow drifts in the dark to ring the door bell. Did I mention she was blonde?

From the attached pictures, you can see where I'm headed. I want to thank the board members for ideas (from just reading). Had everything on hand except the 2" PVC and associated connectors. It takes about 30 seconds to fill the barrel 3/4's full.

Ok one mistake, I should have had the feed PVC extend into the barrel so the corn would stop flowing when the barrel was 3/4's full. I'm going to look around for something I can make a window with and put that in the barrel. Plus, I think when I put in the 'window' I am going to try and put something in that will spread the corn out a bit, maybe help get more dust out of it.

My goal for next year would to some how mount the barrel above the corn furnace so I can just open the gate on the bottom and let corn fall into the hopper.

The tie down around the blue barrel is because, well some one in this house is not the most graceful person in the world, but I may have mentioned her in the third paragraph. I don't need 100 lbs of corn falling on her. Did I mention she was blonde?

Well adding pictures didn't work. Seems to make the whole post worthless.

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Welcome aboard, Shoe. Au contraire. Your post was useful. Great to have another handy person on board who's generous in sharing ideas. Perhaps your pics exceeded the size limit. You could try resizing and reposting.

I made windows in my barrel by drilling a vertical column of 1 1/4" holes then gluing scraps of an old clear visor over the holes. It's just what I had handy.

And I'm sure that you love your daughter very much

Shoe, welcome!!!
Thanks for writing this, I was laughing and really enjoyed the read even without the pictures!

We all start out doing it the hard way, and then learn to do it a little easier every year. My first year, about 11 years ago now, I dropped a full 55 gallon steel barrel from the back of a pickup onto my foot. Broke three bones in my foot, and lost a few weeks of pay. I learned quickly there was a better way to do it, lol...........