Snow Off the Barn Roof

A dark metal roof facing mostly south east loses its snow pretty quickly. And all that snow ends up down on the ground, blocking the stall doors and the main door into the barn.

The snow we had on Sunday night was followed by rain then single digit temperatures the next night. Consequently, all the snow is now hard as a rock. Thankfully Maddy was able to clean up enough of the snow yesterday while I was at work so we could get into the barn and get one of the stall doors to the yard open.  Today it took quite a while to get everything open, and the use of a nice ice chopper too.

The sheep were happy to get outside today. And the boys love to check out anything you are working on anywhere near them.

We've been thinking about making a shed roof coming off the barn roof for a number of reasons, but the snow has added another reason.  It sure would be nice not to have to shovel snow away from all the doors. The shed roof would also allow us to keep the stall doors open in inclement weather and it would keep an area in the pen dry. Outside of the pen, the hill going up to the door gets very slippery in the snow and rain. If the shed roof goes along the entire length of the barn it would also protect the area outside the main door.  We will probably get an estimate from the contractor who built the barn. It would be great to have the roof in place before next winter.