A New Creep

Alan built a creep the first year we had lambs, but we rapidly outgrew its approximately 12 square feet size. Last year I used the long side of the creep in front of the door to the smaller stall. That worked great, but we lambed nearly a month later and it never got too cold at night necessitating the doors needing to be closed. This year we have had some frigid nights in the teens with the winds blowing right in the doors. We needed to come up with a creep plan that would allow the doors to be closed and still let the lambs come and go in the creep.

We were able to use some of the support structure on the barn wall from the old creep set up, a gate that I needed to move anyway, and the end panel for the original creep. The lambs are figuring it out. The older ones are happy to be able to eat grain without having to jostle with the big ewes.The lambs now have 32 square feet to get away from the commotion of the ewes and eat in peace.

The Manure Fork

The best thing we bought this year is the manure fork. It attaches to the front bucket of the tractor and does an incredible job raking and scooping up manure and bedding. My least favorite job in the barn is raking up soiled bedding, especially if is packed down for a while.
The fork in action, lining up for a scoop:

then picking up nearly half of the bedding in an 8x8 stall.

And taking it away.

And onto the manure pile.

We cleaned out a 16x16 area in about two hours; a job that would have taken three people all day if done by hand. A well spent $260 dollars!

Fall Preparations

In between all the other things going on around here, we've been getting in loads of hay. Today was our fifth load for a total of 130 bales of hay and 8 bales of straw. I am hoping we can do one more load; getting more straw and finishing up with a little more hay. My hay farmer is pretty good about keeping hay around so if I run out in early spring it won't be horrible, just a pain.

Getting the garage work mostly completed has made more room in the barn for hay and straw. And I need to figure out where to put some lambing jugs.

Water!

Alan has been diligently working away at getting the hydrants in the barn and veggie garden hooked up. Yesterday was the day. We now have water in the barn!

And the garden!

And soon all the electric will be done too.

Then we just have to clean up the huge bomb site that is our yard.

Lots of Progress!

Alan had a very busy weekend getting the water line into the house.  Our well is in a concrete "bunker" next to the house and the water line goes out of the bunker and into the house.

Alan wanted to have the water line to the barn attach in the basement so he could have more control over it, but that meant getting through the bunker. A hammer drill on the outside down in a ditch wasn't working so that meant he had to go down into the bunker and drill from the inside.

But that tank from the old jet pump system was in the way. And the hole in the lid of the bunker wasn't big enough to get the tank out. So Alan took out a corner of the lid. Why they just didn't make a bigger hole when they poured the lid is beyond me. It was so small a normal sized man had trouble getting through it.

Once the tank was out of the way Alan had lots of room to cut the hole for the water line. Getting into the house was the easy part. The current line from the well had plenty of room for another line to

slide right in next to it.

Today the contractors were here with a crew. The mason put the scratch coat on the block. The drain tile was laid and then the area was backfilled.

The area around the garage and driveway was graded to make it possible to mow and the parking area was enlarged.

Tomorrow we get more stone spread in the parking area and up by the barn where it was all torn up getting the water line dug. And the mason should be back to put the finish coat on the parging. Alan hopes to move back in to the third bay of the garage this weekend which will give me more room in the barn, yay!

More Progress

Alan had a very busy weekend putting screened soil around the water line (don't ask what happens when a water line has sharp rocks around it), filling the trench part way, then laying down electrical conduit and finishing the back filling.

He has about half the conduit buried and all the water line buried. Still to come is getting the water line into the house and connected to the line from the well. Then it's major landscaping time.

The contractor came today and took down the rest of the old block wall. It looks like we have a carport.

I am guessing the mason will be coming soon. I am glad Alan only has the trench to work on right now. Originally he wanted to replace the wall but we had the money and there are so many other jobs he could be working on. He is one tired man after working on the trench all weekend.

Progress

On Day 1 (Wednesday) the young guy with the excavator dug the trench up to the barn:

and dug out most of the soil around the end bay of the garage.

Alan then laid the water pipe in the trench since the weather forecast was calling for heavy rain in the next 24 hours and we were afraid too much soil would get washed into the trench.

Next up for the trench is some backfill then laying the conduit for the electrical line, more backfilling then seeding. Alan will be doing all that work himself.

 On Day 2 I went to work in the dark and came home in the dark. This morning I awoke to this:

It looks like a tornado came through here.

Can't wait to see what next week brings!

Soon! Water in the Barn!

Today is a big day. The day I have been waiting for since early spring when I wrote out the deposit check for work on the barn, the trench to bury the water and power lines to the barn, and the replacement of the wall on the north end of the garage.

The sheep and I have been enjoying the barn overhang/addition for a couple months, but I was eager to get water up to the barn and have the wall replaced.

The beginning of the trench up to the barn!

Once the trench is dug Alan will lay water pipe and the power line and fill in the trench. It will be so nice to have water up in the barn this winter. No more carrying buckets of water or sliding around pulling the ice sled. The 275 gallon tote we used last winter in the barn was great until it got really cold (like 14 degrees fahrenheit) and froze solid. We now have a series of hoses we use in the warmer months that run up through the garden, to the barn, across the stream to the ram's pasture, and over to the chickens' pen. We will definitely be able to get rid of some of those hoses. Alan will put a yard hydrant at the garden too.

I am also excited to get the end and back wall to the third bay of the garage replaced. Every time I look it seems worse.

That is daylight coming through the crack next to the spider. There are multiple places where daylight is shining through. One block can even be taken out and put back in by hand. We warned the guy digging that the wall might collapse once the soil supporting it is taken away. It's a strange concept; the ground that is pushing the wall in and making it unstable is also what is holding it up.  It's nice to see some big things happening.

The Barn Addition and Rain Barrels

The contractor finished up the work on the barn Thursday. This weekend Alan put the gutter back up, raked out the dirt and seeded.

Then the rain barrels needed to get placed. The two barrels on the other side of the barn weren't touched, but the side with the addition needed major work to get the barrels working properly. We nearly doubled the catchment area of rain water on the south side roof. We used to have two 50 gallon rain barrels, one at each corner, on this side of the barn. The corner closest to the house is now too low for a barrel so Alan pitched the gutter to the southwest corner and placed the barrel there. Last year the barrel in each corner would fill up with about one inch of rain. Tonight we finally had a good rain storm and this is what happened.

The barrels are all linked together with hoses and will seek their equilibrium, but there was a lot of air in the lines since Alan had just reconnected everything. And it was a very hard downpour. We were going to use three of the 50 gallon rain barrels and a 240 gallon tote as overflow, but the water doesn't move that quickly between barrels.  I think we need to use the 240 gallon tote on the southwest corner.
It was great using this rainwater to water the garden last year. Our well is not very deep and will run dry if I water everything in the garden, or less if I just washed a load of laundry.

Barn Work

Thursday this pile of wood showed up. And yesterday the equipment arrived.

That could only mean one thing. We had moved up on the list of projects for our contractor. Sure enough, this was what I saw today when I got home from work.

This is just a simple shed roof on posts. It will be so nice to have a dry space outside the stalls for the winter. We will be able to keep the top stall doors open for ventilation and not have snow or rain come into the stalls. And the sheep and goats will have a dry place to hang out in the rain. But the best part will be not having to shovel the snow that slid off the roof before I can open the doors!

Hay Auction

Every Saturday while we are out running errands we see large loads of hay coming out of the hay auction. We finally had a chance to go check it out. It would be nice to buy up a load of hay at wholesale prices in the fall.

The hay is brought in loaded onto pickup trucks and/or trailers and sold by the lot. It is listed as either number of bales or weight. We saw loads between 50-75 bales and 2000-3000 pounds. There appears to be a delivery charge of $1/mile and we aren't sure if that is from the auction or the farm the hay came from.  Some sellers had an increase in delivery charge to $2/mile over ten miles. We didn't talk to anyone in the office about buyer's premiums and other business. This is definitely something worth checking out next fall when we are looking to load up the barn with hay for the winter.

Building a Lamb Creep From Pallets

I have wanted/needed a lamb creep and finally have one. My husband has been extremely busy at work but was able to carve out an afternoon to make me very happy. I have been showing him plans and he finally realized what exactly I needed in a lamb creep.

I was thinking he would want to work with new wood but he thought we could make a lamb creep from pallets. Saturday evening we went out and found two pallets which would work beautifully. Luckily, Alan is a facilities manager and they are moving a huge lab and have lots of pallets sitting around waiting to go. The plans I found for a lamb creep had the height at 3ft and the spacing of the uprights at 8 inches. These two pallets are exactly 3 ft tall and the spacing of the uprights ranged between 7.5 to 8.25 inches. The middle 2x4 was also at 1ft 6inches like in the plans. These pallets were waiting to be made into  a lamb creep!

Cutting the pallets to the size needed would give us a creep approximately 3ftx5ft. The short end went up against the door frame. A 2x4 was nailed to the siding nailers of the pole barn and sandwiched the short wall.

The long wall got a notch for the nailer.

Then the long wall was sandwiched as well by 2x4's.

The great thing about this creep is we can dismantle it as needed. The walls slip into their 2x4 slots and pin into place. Here is the corner:

The short wall is attached with a hook and eye. We need a beefier hook but this is working for now:

The finished creep:

We took two boards off the unused portion of a pallet and used them to block off two of the spaces so it would be harder for the ewes to stick their heads in, but they still try:

I guess eventually the ewes will give up trying to get into the lamb creep.

Snowy Day Chores

We already had at least 3 inches of new snow when I went out to feed at 8AM this morning and it was snowing heavily.  Unfortunately, today was the day I needed to clean out the large sheep stall. 16x8 feet of packed straw, hay and manure! Thankfully, Maddy's workplace was closed due to the weather so I had her help. By the time we finished there was at least 6 inches of new snow on the ground.
This is what we dug out of the barn:

It took at least 12-13 large wheelbarrow loads to get the stall cleaned out. But the sheep seem to like the clean fresh straw bedding.

We found this in the packed straw! Must have been baled up in the hay or straw. I hope ram 3 didn't find a piece of aluminum and eat it. I guess we need to add "hardware disease" to the list of differential diagnoses.

On the next "nice" day we just have an 8x8 foot stall left to clean out.

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.

2015...in with a BANG, Literally

As I was sitting at the computer planning a great post on goals for 2015 Alan came in to tell me that the game lands gave us another tree last night.

We were fortunate in two ways. First, the tree was dead and had lost all of its upper limbs already. Second, the tree barely grazed the roof eave edge of the new barn causing minimal damage.

The tree is an ash and seems to be seasoned so we will be able to burn it this year.

Unfortunately, the ash tree took the top 15 feet or so off an oak tree. It now stands about 20 feet tall. We'll let it go and see if it is able to recover.

Barn Water

I am loving my new water tank in the barn.  Eventually we will dig a trench and get a water line up to the barn, but for now we will be using this 275 gallons tank that was made for transporting a corn syrup product. Alan has figured out the secret to filling the tank and not running the well dry. And if we top it off every time the weather is nice we shouldn't have to haul too many buckets of water this winter.

It has been great not having to haul water up to the barn. The chickens are right outside the barn so their water is easy to carry and the goats are all down hill so that's not too bad either. The sheep have the biggest water need so having the water tank in the barn is a godsend.

Another Barn Door

Alan put in the second barn stall door so now we can have two different stalls with separate access to the barn paddock.

We also got some nice hardware for the latches and cut the doors into their two parts, like Dutch doors.

We have had the sheep for three weeks now but I am not ready to let them even come close to our goats yet. Two of the sheep have had loose stools and have been off their feed and two have been scratching between their shoulders and the one who will let me touch her has some weird crusty lumps on her back. Finding a large animal veterinarian has proven a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I think I found one. Hopefully I can get someone out this week to check them all out.

The Finished Fence

It always amazes me how fast a crew of guys who do something all the time can be. Our fence took less than two full days. Unfortunately, the snow that fell on the first day make for a muddy mess that probably won't be repaired until spring. But the fence looks great!

They even put in supports for a livestock bridge that Alan will build next year so we can access the pasture on the other side of the stream.

We spent Saturday rebuilding the sheep paddock outside the barn. The sheep were very happy to be able to go outside again. They did not seem to appreciate being stuck in the barn for two days.