I looked at this picture in Entertaining, Martha Stewart’s first book, for years, and all I saw was cookies. Delicious chocolate chip cookies. And then, one day, when I was ready, I saw IT: the antique wooden thing the cookies were in. I don’t know what it’s called, and I don’t know what it was built to be, but I knew what I wanted one for: seedlings. Something I could move from inside under the grow lights, out to the cold frame, and then out to the garden to plant.
I also knew what I wanted to build it out of:

Scraps of cedar fencing torn off an old raised bed.

My specifications were simple. I wanted it to be the right dimensions to fit the plastic covers from a garden center seed-starting tray I already had, and I wanted the handle to be short enough so the tray would fit inside my cold frame with the lid closed.

Using a plastic cover as a guide, I built a box:

Then I added a handle and a bottom:

It’s 2 1/2 inches high, 21 inches long, and 11 1/4 inches wide. The handle is 10 in. high. I used 6 x 1/1/4″ exterior grade wood screws and waterproof wood glue, drilling pilot holes to keep the wood from splitting.

Here it is with the cover on:

Now I want some chocolate chip cookies.