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Make a tire swing for some frugal family fun

make a tire swing

We had to get new tires for our 12 passenger van. Normally, I’m not real excited about that but I’ve been hoping we’d need to soon so we could make a tire swing. We had one of these in another house and it was much loved – by kids of all ages. Wanna see how fun it is… (how to instructions are at the end of the post)

tire swing

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All you need is a tire, sharp knife, strong rope (we used mule tape – but will be changing to rope), 2″-3″ in diameter branch,  two 2′ pieces of old garden hose, tall tree with strong branches.

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Pardon Esther, she just can’t help herself when there’s a camera involved.

Using your sharp knife (Carl used his pocketknife) cut 4 X’s on one side of the tire. Try to make them about the same distance apart. Put your rope through one hole and attach one of the small branches to it. Then, string the rope through one of the garden hoses, this is what is actually going to be touching the tree branch to protect the rope. Go ahead and get it up on the branch where you want it to get the lengths right. put the rope through one of the holes next to the first one. Now, pull the rope up through the next hole. Run it through the other piece of garden hose, up over the tree branch and down to the last hole. Pull the rope through the last hole and secure a branch like you did in the first hole.

Disclaimer: We have a no spinning rule. Of course, there’s always some spinning that happens when you push the swing but we don’t allow intentionally twisting the ropes until they can no longer be twisted and then letting go. Once Gabriel was spun so hard on our old tire swing that he not only threw up but capillaries all over his face and in the whites of his eyes burst. Consider yourself warned…

Enjoy!

This post is shared at Barn Hop, Mostly Handmade Mondays, Backyard Farming Connection, Tuesday GreensMaple Hill Hop, Homemaking Blog hop, Mountian Woman Rendezvous, What We Learned Wednesday, Family Friday Summer Fun Link up.

Thanks for sharing with your friends!

daisy

Tuesday 25th of February 2014

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! That looks like a lot of fun! Enjoy! ;0)

Lila

Thursday 20th of February 2014

Wow, this is great! Now I'm not going to fret so much next time we need new tires! How in the world did you get the swing strung up so high, though?

Angi Schneider

Thursday 20th of February 2014

lol...our 17year old climbed the tree. Good thing I wasn't here at the time. But, the one we had in our last house wasn't that high. Just find a strong branch and it will be fine.

heather

Tuesday 18th of February 2014

some of my best childhood memories are on a tire swing! the simplest things can be so much fun! your kids look like they had a blast!

Angi Schneider

Tuesday 18th of February 2014

I think every kids should have a tire swing.

Joann

Tuesday 18th of February 2014

I love the swing. In the background I see your bee hives in your chicken run. May I ask, what are the wires (or string?) going from the T posts up into the trees? Your bee hives are sitting up on some kind of stand and have something around the "legs" of the stands including the top bar. What is that and why? Is there a reason you decided to share space? I tried to get a swarm to live in my top bar hive with no luck. How did you prepare your top bar for the bees? In relation to the langsdorf hives, how do you like the top bar? Thank you for answering my questions. I do love your blog.

Angi Schneider

Tuesday 18th of February 2014

Hi Joann, the strings are thick fishing line. When my husband and I got married we lived on the coast and he worked at a restuarant that had outside seating. They used this technique to keep the seagulls from flying into the seating area. We use it to keep the predator birds from trying to snag our chicks/small hens. The stand is just cinder blocks and a some thick plywood as a shelf. The buckets have canola oil in them. The woods behind our property have lots of carpenter ants and we've lost a couple of hives to them so we put the buckets with the oil to prevent that. The ants go into the oil instead of up into the hive. We decided to share space because it's the only shady area in our yard and we wanted to be near the woods. In the photos from the other angle you can see that there's alot of wide open space and no shade. The bees have never bothered the chickens and the chickens have never bothered the bees. My 16yo son is the beekeeper so I'm asking him these questions. He said that there's a product called Swarm Lure (or something like that) and you can use that to get the swarm to come into the hive. The hive he put in the topbar was from a live bee removal and he used rubber bands to attach some of their comb to the bars. Once they know their comb is in the box they are more likey to go in and stay. A friend built the topbar hive as a gift to Gabriel and he put an observation windo in it. So for me, as the observer and photographer, I like it better. Gabriel says for size control of the hive, the top bar is better. But for honey production the Lngs are better. The honey is also easier to extract from Langs. With the topbar, to get the honey you have to destroy the comb and the bees will have to rebuild from nothing. Hope that helps. I've been trying to get him to write some bee posts for me but it's not happening...