da barn, da barn is finally done

The Boys barn.
The project that I figured should take a week tops. And has now been dragged out..what??? Two months? Thanks to way more work than I expected, and the weather being hit and miss.
I think it's finally finished.

This was the barn, at the original state. To say it was rough would be an understatement.

So Rough, it was actually missing boards and a hole right through the one side.

We bought a ton of Styrofoam sheets to use for insulation.

We cut and fit them between the 2x4's (That was Nathan and my job. He was actually quite a big help bringing the sheets over to the barn while I cut and pieced)

The painting began. I had won out on getting the barn red color. but as soon as it started going on I realized that painting brand new raw lumber and weathered old barn board the same color did not actually make them the same color. It was such a drastic difference I decided the whole thing needed to be whitewashed first to act as a primer for the red color to go on evenly.

And here is the final result. It's not perfect, but a heck of a change from the first pictures!?!?

And all the wood that had to be pieced inside to keep the goats from eating the Styrofoam insulation in the walls.

I froze today

Like thought I might die froze. It was about -2C outside. It didn't seem all that cold with the sun shining.
So I thought I'd take a run at finishing the paint on the boys barn.

Here are the factors I didn't take into account:
1) The barns are in the shade- no sun- not so warm
2) All the required painting was 6 feet or more up which means a ladder. Ladders are cold steel objects.
3) The paint cans are also metal, which gets really cold in your hands.

I did about 2 hours before the sun was setting. And came in not sure I could uncurl my hands from that wrapped-around-the-paintbrush-claw look I had going on. But the back of the barn and one whole side are completely Red! Yeah. I'm getting close enough, if I finish the front I may fake it and take a picture just to show you how much of a change there has been. It's not gorgeous but it's definitely transformed.

The additional pen

A couple days ago I mentioned the new fence that we got built this month. Although the only picture I could find in our archives was taken the winter we moved in It gives a pretty good idea of how the area and landscape has been changed by the addition of this fencing. Since both pictures are from relatively the same angle and approximate distance. You'll just have to ignore the obvious difference of snow vs. no snow.

[BEFORE]

[AFTER]

I am so excited about this fence. Because it effectively gives us three separate pens to rotate the goats through. And because it connects the 2 existing fields, the amount of time spent chasing the goats into one field or the other has also been eliminated. Finally it solved the little problem I had with getting a metal garden shed to drop in the front field (see: a hillbilly backed over my shed). The entire reason I wanted a garden shed in that field was to provide protection from the elements while they grazed the front field. Now that the front area of the girls barn is sealed in they can seek shelter back in their own barn instead of needing a separate one, if the gate is left open between the 2 areas. Or they can simply spend the day playing in this area in front of the barn and have the option of heading in whenever they need it.

The speed that the fence went up has to be a record around here too!

Hubby dug the fence posts holes in a day

(with the handy dandy clam shell auger I found at the flea market for $30 back in August)
And tapped in the posts that day. He let them settle overnight, nailing boards to them and constructing gates the next day. While he was constructing and hanging gates, as well as fixing some miscellaneous holes at the back of the new pasture (not to mention reinforcing the chicken run).I went wild with the whitewash and manged to barely stay one step ahead painting both sides of the fence in one afternoon and the next morning. As soon as the paint was dry he put up the wires and bah boom- New goat pasture in only a few days!

Where did October Go?

Really?
It's been a hectic stressful month around here. I had some very sick kids 2 trips to the Emergency room within 12 hours kind of sick. And a husband who although technically employed seemed to be on "standby" and thus here all month. Although we (and by that I mean HE- to a large extent) managed to get quite a few projects done. The money issue of staying home and working only on the farm has been a nightmare.

I'll try and get some pictures posted of the work that has gone on. The most noticeable to the whole landscape of the yard was about 100 or so feet of fence that my hubby built and then wired in so we effectively have another goat pen. It leads straight to our "big" field out front, which not only means 3 pen rotation for the goats but also no goats chasing across the front yard when they decide they'd rather go on an adventure then head into the front field.

We also finished the boys barn, insulation, new wood, and about 80% painted. So at least its livable for winter. And obviously their pasture is all enclosed now.
The Girls barn still needs some work, but is getting there. It's comfortable enough for our first snow. but I'm not sure it's -40 proof yet.

Right now our big concern is getting hay.
Although lots of people have it for sale. We're finding a lot of people have no way of loading it. (explain that to me?- yeah here's a 1200 pound hay bale -good luck!?!?)
We've also realized it's going to be quite an engineering feat to unload hay bales once we get them here.
If I could go back in time...
We've learned since buying this place, that most people will write the current tractor into the farm offer. And I can't tell you how many times I've cursed us, for not knowing and not doing that.
As of right now, a tractor, just isn't in the tight budget. So although I'm sure we'll be able to secure hay bales and get them loaded. our adventures getting them off the truck may end up being YOUTUBE worthy!

Return of the Chickens

We picked up the chickens this afternoon from the processors. And man are those some big chickens

17 of them are currently taking up about 1/4 of our freezer space.


Yes, 17...although we dropped off 18. Apparently one of them still had food in it's crop. This caused some sort of mess (I don't totally want to know the details) and the meat became "infected". They used to just wash off the birds and package them anyways (according to the lady at the plant) but new regulations state they must cut all salvageable meat from the bird and dispose of the carcass. Since this is a relatively new procedure for them, I guess all the bugs haven't been worked out yet and the entire bird was either disposed of, or it had gone missing in the very least.
They paid me out for the bird. At $15 dollars. I was tempted to ask if they wanted to pay me that for all the birds. Then I wouldn't have lost any money in this little chicken raising experiment.
Actually I did ask quite a few questions about how the bird had become "infected" I was more interested in making sure it had been a contamination problem on site. Rather than us bringing in a sick bird.
I probably sounded like an idiot re asking this question is several different ways, but I kept explaining to her "this is our first year raising chickens and we really don''t know what we're doing".
She told me it sure looked like we knew what we were doing because they were awfully big birds.
Maybe she just said it to shut me up.
but Ill take it.
It felt pretty good.

When we got home we spent another couple of hours cutting the Styrofoam insulation for the "Boys" barn. Chris got the front window sealed off too. Hence the ladder. and little jack-and-the-beanstalk, climbing into the clouds. We bought some more wood tonight, and I'm hoping we get finished with the barn makeover tomorrow. I doubt it will get paint right away (I still want it to go red, and we only have white paint kicking around) but I may get some pictures up of the whole PROCESS once I get some AFTER pictures.

I did another "experiment" today. I took Maggie into the goat pen.

She's walked up to them sniffed them and lost interest. She's actually been in their barn, which nearly caused a revolt on their part. But today I decided to bring her into the pen unleashed and see how things went.

She chased them.

But would stop when they were all together.

She actually does have the herding instinct she's suppose too!!!

I'm not totally surprised I've actually seen her try to herd Nathan (minus the nipping at the heels) whenever she feels he's gone too far in the yard.

Overall, Maggie did pretty well as far as I'm concerned.

The goats as you can see in the picture have completely different feelings about this new addition to the herd.

Not that I'll be leaving her alone with them any time soon. We're going to do quite a few more experiments in the next few weeks to make sure she understands her job would be to protect them. Not just make them run around for her own amusement.