How to Build A Rustic DiY Fence for Close to Nothing - Using Wood Slabs

I'm always on the lookout for ways to build structures on the cheap, so this means that I'm finding material that is really close to free, if not completely free because we found it on the curb, in the trash or someone's posted about an item they're trying To get rid of.

Just the other day, I found a post from someone who owns and operates a sawmill. He was advertising $10 a pickup load of wood slabs! At first I thought this was a great business to think about if you know how to sell the left over stuff that you can't really do much with. But when I looked at it I saw a lot of good usable material and so I picked up a bunch, one pick up load actually.

I decided to build a fence, though I got this stuff with the intent to use it as sidding for my chicken coop (it still will be at some point), I started with this fence that I was just talking about. So here you go, let me show you some pictures. How I went about it, debarking it and everything. And figuring out how to do it:

This is the pile all neatly sorted on the ground of my garage. Believe it or not, there's a stack in the back that is nice and flat on both sides... I'm thinking shelving with a live edge for something!!!

The first thing to do to figuring this out was to actually see what kind of offense I wanted to build. I roughly knew the height I wanted it to be, so once I cut a few pieces I needed, I went ahead with debarking.

I have a shingle knife but it didn't work all that well, the pieces are too small, they moved around too much (even when they were clamped down) and I don't know how to use those really either!! So I tried a chisel and that worked really well. It probably helped that the wood was still green, it came off relatively easy!

The next step was laying it out on the ground on top of one longer slab of wood I cut in halt longways to make beams.

I like it!!! And that's what we went with. I spaced them all about 2 feet apart (on center) and after making a couple of these, we'll put them up on the corner of the property, almost like a rustic looking farm fence, to protect a patch of local wild flowers we're planting. Jess wants flowers so she gets flowers...

The fence will be something the snow plow guy should be able to see in the winter and not cut that corner!!! I'll be crossing my fingers next winter for sure.

I'll take pictures of that as soon as I put it up. I will let you know!

Let me know in what kind of ways you save money and still manage to build the life you wanna build.