Catching up
Hello! I have a lot to catch up on. I started writing a post Wednesday night about the barn work we did last weekend, but my brain was tired and it got even more disjointed and rambling than usual. Then the end of my week got busy and now there’s more to report on, so I am just going to scrap it and try to cover it all in one long post. People love that, right? That's why twitter was so successful... the long posts?
Moving on! Last weekend we put together first installment of new pen panels and then I shoveled out all of the dirty bedding and we put up the first pen!
It was the opposite of this weekend weather-wise, and my hands were numb and I kept dropping screws and I actually went back to the house to warm up. It is super rare for me to be cold, I was born for winter weather. I obviously dress appropriately, but I feel like the cold reminds me that I’m alive, and it makes me more appreciative of the warmth of the house. I was so upset by being cold that I took a super wimpy photo of my angry red hands. It was a real low point for me toughness wise. I did get back out there with a thermos of tea and one of coffee for Chris and we finished the work.
This barn hasn’t really been used for animals in this way in a long time, so there are all kinds of accumulated treasures that we are finding as we get more settled. While I was cleaning up the shavings I ran across several rusty saw blades. Like a barn in a horror film... not exactly sheep friendly. Obviously I saved them to use for decor along with my existing collection of rusty tools, like anyone would.
Oh, I remember that the scrapped post got kind of off track when got into the 700 phases of the sheep barn update. This pen is phase 2, so if you see a lot of work still to do in the background of the photos, trust me, I see it too.
Fast forward to this weekend, I was definitely not cold. I was stripping off layers of clothing and discarding them all around the farm. We were forecasted for one of those delightful spring phenomena where the day is 70 and sunny followed by thunderstorms and a 50 degree drop in temperature overnight. This is the weather I worry about the animals most. I feel like I have to do my best to keep them dry during the rain so they don’t freeze solid. If that means that I need to trick them into staying under cover, then that’s what I’ll try to do. Not that I've ever been able to outsmart the livestock.
Our ram and his two wether companions Harry and Wooliver have been in a kind of sad little pen behind the barn. It’s really windy there, so we built a windbreak of round bales and stretched a tarp across the top of the pen at one end to give them cover. I just wrote ‘we’ there, but it was definitely Chris, he has been the main caretaker for the guys since we moved. It sounds feeble, but we were so super busy trying to unpack and get ready for winter, that this was the best we could manage. I didn’t even take a photo of it for this post because I feel really bad about it. Sheep are tough, I wasn’t worried for their safety or health, but I want for them to be happy and comfortable too. The plan is for them to move to a 4 acre field behind the house for the summer, so we bought a portable shelter that we could use where they are now and it could move with them wherever they are grazing. We bought it late last year, but we haven’t been able to move them into it because we have had too much snow and ice to disassemble the existing pen. This weekend with the beautiful weather and the gross forecast was the perfect time to fix up their pen and put in the shelter, so I feel good about that. They ran right inside to check it out, hopefully they agree that it's a big improvement.
To trick the ewes into staying dry, we expanded the new indoor pen, and we fed small square bales inside. This is a good example of why we wanted to put in this fancy pen system, even in its most simple state, it doesn’t take much work to open it up, add a panel, and make it bigger, or smaller, or whatever. I can’t wait to get the rest of it built.
On that topic, 7 more panels arrived on Saturday. I was planning to intercept the FedEx man and ask him to back up to the barn to unload, but I didn’t hear him and he stacked all of the panels carefully on the porch. I moved them to the barn, but we haven’t really done anything with them since. Notice my jacket on top of the boxes, that was the first layer shed in the warm weather.
OK, so fast forward a few hours, the guys are in their new pen, everyone is bedded and fed, I’m feeling really good about being ready for inclement weather ahead of time, like, I’m doing a good job for once... and then the wind starts howling.
Some background on the ram shelter is that Chris put it together around the holidays. We were busy and I wasn’t feeling great, so we didn’t get it out there then, and then we moved into deep snow season so we couldn’t do it then. He had put it at the back of the barn and it was there for a few weeks and everything was fine. Then one day we had some weather coming, so he decided to move it to a ‘more secure’ location. Well, when that high winds and rain showed up, the more secure location turned out to be a wind tunnel. It picked up the shelter like it was a dry leaf and blew it across the countryside. It was a week day, so I was working my off farm job and I happened to look out the window and saw the sheep running away from something. I was worried that a dog or coyote had gotten into the barnyard and then I saw the ram shelter bounce out from behind the barn. I ran downstairs and put on some rain gear and boots and by the time I got outside the shelter was across the road into a hay field and so far away I wasn’t even really sure that it was the shelter. Then it kept going! I ran after it until my own wheezing became louder than the driving rain, then I slowed down and eventually caught up with it. Dragging it back in the serious wind that blew it away in the first place was a Sisyphean feat. My own significant body weight could not move it at all when the wind was gusting. I think it was probably 1/4 mile away by the time I caught it and I had to drag it back through the soaked muddy field, across the road and back onto our farm. I found out that my rain pants are actually just for looks, so that’s valuable information. I dragged the broken and battered shelter into the garage and changed into dry clothes to go out and check on the sheep and fix the mangled fences that it blew through. It was a rough day, but it could have been way worse and I thought that I had moved on emotionally.
Until I heard the wind howling last night after we just moved the guys into the pen. Obviously we chained the shelter to the corral panels around it and it had the weight of all of those panels together to keep it grounded. Plus, it is situated perpendicular to the prevailing winds, otherwise it wouldn't effectively shelter the sheep. In my sane, daytime brain I thought it would be fine, but in my 2 am brain, all I could think of it that shelter blowing away, or the tarp shredding in the wind and scaring the sheep, exposing them to rain and any number of other disasters. Very little sleeping happened and as soon as it was light enough, I went out to check on them. Naturally, the guys were snug and perfect and I was so happy and also so tired. The farm gods only send mini-disasters as a surprise. If you are expecting something, they wait for another time when they can really get you, so I should have anticipated this.
So that’s pretty much the whole update. Except that this morning was another one with a snowy, icy tractor seat. When I am complaining that the seat is hot this summer, remind me about this. Somehow my bum is always wet regardless of how much wiping and scraping I do.
Also, THIS:
green grass!