Well I managed to sneak in about three hours of progress on the trash enclosure.  I am making it look just like the barns.  So that means lots of details and those are taking longer than I anticipated.  After a phone conversation with Annmarie in which she said she usually triples my time estimate on each job, I realize I am right on track using her schedule, behind on mine.  I got the roof and two sides completed sheathed and ready for decoration.  I sided the far side but still need to put on the seam slats on that side.  The roof involved lots of hammering.  That metal did not want to bend over the sides or front!  Enough colorful language and elbow grease plus some screws got it to stay in place.  I did manage to not smash my fingers, thankfully.  I had to tear down the 1×12 on the table saw to get three inch boards to use as seam slats.  I needed quite a few of these.  I can sure tell which boards have the large knots in them.  As the slats come off the table saw they fall apart because the knot is larger than three inches.  Lost several boards that way.  I figure I will need those scraps for something later on.  Now to just figure out where to stash them until they are needed?

Two completed sides and a finished roof.

All three sides on

Seam slats on, now I just need to install the graphics so the air can move through.

I made a mockup of the design I am going to cut into the side of the building.  It needs to be approved by the boss (wife) before I can put it on the building.  I am hoping to get done by Friday.  I brought in the boards to cut out the bird houses that are going to go into the corners.  I had to find plans online, but every time I thought I had found some it was another search engine.  I even had my virus scanner stop one virus.  Who attaches a computer virus to bird house plans?  What kind of sicko is that?  On a weird side note I had plans to cut out a crescent moon and some stars on the front door.  My only reason for this is I remember seeing them on old outhouses.  My mother-in-law did an internet search and found out that due to high illiteracy rates a crescent moon designated female door and stars designated male door.  Pretty amazing, I never knew that.

The weather was not very good today.  More rain and wind and then some sunshine then more wind, I just could not justify going outside and doing any work.  I didn’t want to torture myself.  I guess that’s why I love Spring.  I can go outside and work in relatively mild weather.  Could be why I have a year round inside job?  The sheep are loving the new grazing opportunities.  Annmarie tells me that I was not feeding them enough.  They were alive and I tell her the sheep are supposed to get skinny in the Winter that’s why they put on weight in the Fall.  So we decided to let the sheep roam out around the cars and machine shop.  Boy the great forage has done amazing things.  In the last two weeks all the sheep have gotten fat!  It is amazing.  I may have been underfeeding a little bit…

Fat sheep in the unfenced orchard area

In the orchard sheep picture you can see all the babies.  The three sheep directly behind the wooly sheep in the foreground are the first three babies we had earlier this year (almost 12 weeks old now).  The newest lamb (cat sized one) is on the left side near the back.  She is right behind her mother.  The sheep are starting to lose their Winter wool.  They scrape it all off on the fence and whatever else they can rub against.

Lucky is shedding his wool.  He will soon be our only ram.

My baby chickens are growing and healthy now.  No more sick ones after I switched back to medicated feed. They are at the awkward stage where they don’t have a full set of feathers yet.  I have picked out my favorite already, I just need to get Sarah on board so we can start to tame it down.  There is one of the Brahma girls that is brown.  She is the only brown one.  I had to switch feeders for the chicks.  I had a small channel feeder and the chicks are emptying the thing every day.  So I went to a 1.5 gallon metal feeder.  It should take them a few days to empty it now.  I went to feed the chickens tonight (I am doing all the chores as the child is on light duty and just had surgery) and there was a mouse trapped in the food can (I use 50 gallon metal trash cans to hold feed).  The lid was on the can, but not tight and once the mouse got in there was 12 inches to the chicken feed.  It couldn’t jump back out.  So I usually stun the mice by hitting them with the plastic scoop then tossing them to the cats.  It is hard to stun the mouse when it keeps getting pushed down into the chicken food.  Finally, I managed to stun it and scoop it up.  There was a cat in the coop with me so I tossed it onto the ground in the coop and called the cat, before the cat could even spot the little mouse a chicken ran over and grabbed the mouse and ran away outside the coop.  She didn’t want anyone else to take her treasured morsel away.  Last year when I tried to give the mouse to the chickens they ignored it.  But they have been out in the field and barn scratching for bugs and greens, I suspect some mice have vanished in the process.  Kinda funny since last month I tried to feed the chickens some worms and they would not even touch them, totally ignored the worms.

Almost 1 month old chicks.  You can see my favorite on the right hand side, the brown Brahma girl

Chicks running around in baby enclosure.  No adult chicken or cat can get inside.

We got back from the hospital on Saturday so on Sunday it was either sleep or go outside and get something done.  Seems like every time I sat down I was falling asleep.  So I went out and worked on the trash can holder.  I managed to get the entire thing framed up and then did a run for the lumber (it is stored in the old chicken house).  I did buy too many 2x4s, so I swapped out a bunch of 1x12s for the extra I had just purchased.  I calculated I needed 37 of the one foot wide boards to cover all four sides and the roof.  Now that I am halfway done, I think I overestimated.  Better to have too many at this point.  Otherwise I would have to make a second trip out to the old chicken house.  The spring up there seems to be holding its own, it has eroded back into the hill, but the sink hole has not reemerged.  I am definitely going to have to keep up on that or we will end up with another bottomless sink hole (it had a bottom, but it was like quicksand, I put over 3 yards of boulders into the small hole before it finally got a bottom.  I was afraid the livestock would fall in and we would never be able to get them out).
I started the siding on the trash can holder and it is going to limit my design that can be cut into the sides.  So know I am not sure what I am going to put on it.

Trash can holder looking from the house

I am now planning to add some bird houses inside the enclosure.  I will drill some holes at the top outer edges and line them up with a bird house that I attach inside the building.  I am thinking about adding six houses.  I will install pegs in front of each  of the holes so the birds can get in and out.  Maybe the birds will help keep the yellow jacket  infestation down to a dull roar.  If not, it will still be cool!   I do have plans to add a metal roof, but I needed to get the wood up first.  It looks good with a wooden roof, but it would not hold up in the weather.  I moved the trash can into the enclosure already.  I am very tired of picking up trash!

Partially finished trash can holder

Cows scratching on my nice fence!

Future garbage can holder frame

The other day I was drinking coffee in the kitchen and looking out the window when I spotted these culprits abusing my fence!  I just finished that fence last year and the cows use it as a scratching post.  If you look real close you can see a couple of rocks from the rock jack that have been knocked to the ground.  I need to string a strand of electrical wire but to do that I have to run an overhead cable from the chicken coop to the fence and then string the wire and install two gate crossings.  Needless to say that is not happening this year.

Location of future garbage can/outhouse building I have been talking to Annmarie about building a container for our trash can.  I was going to put it across the driveway but she wanted it here, so here it is, the future home of our garbage can holder.  I am going to make it look like an outhouse.  I actually drew out some plans so I would know how much lumber to buy (I never draw plans).  I went in and picked it up today.  I only had to buy the frame pieces as I had purchased an entire bundle of 1×10 x8foot last year at a local fundraiser auction.  Those are all stacked out in the old chicken building.  I have them neatly stored for future use.  All though this really isn’t future use since I am going to use them, but I didn’t know that last year.  Clear as mud.  I was wearing a hat (safety device for the hair impaired) when I smashed my head into the end of one of the 4×4 sticking out of the pickup bed.  It hurt and I expressed my extreme displeasure vocally to the 4×4 but I don’t think it really cared.  I was going to make a six foot by four foot enclosure.  I measured the trash can after making my lumber purchase (remember those plans I drew up earlier?) and realized that an outhouse probably did not need to be that big (trash can was only about 30 inches across each way).  So I altered the plans and made a four foot by four foot enclosure.  The bright side of this is I only had to dig four holes instead of six and ended up with two extra pressure treated 4×4.  I can always use those to fix the broken trellis next to the house.  After digging the holes (I used the Pythagorean theorem at the lumber yard to calculate the hypotenuse so I could just measure the holes and not lay out a string frame.  I had to borrow a calculator with a square root function at the store as I am not very good at getting to the inch in my head.   He offered to go get me his engineering calculator but one of cheap ones at the counter had a square root function.  I was throwing him off, I told him that all those kids that despise math have a thing or two to learn, because we use it every day) I realized that I could set one pole by myself but how was I going to set the rest of the poles and keep everything square and exactly four feet apart?  I needed some assistance.  The child was enlisted as post holder and squarer (remember she is on light duty so I had to do all the extra digging as my holes needed a little adjustment).  It was much easier with some help (thank you Sarah!).  We got the posts in and a couple of supports up to hold it all together.  My battery was running low and Sarah was starting to ask me why I was shaking while holding the drill over my head and trying to screw in the screws (I ignored the child and complained to the wife later that Spring sucks because I don’t do any hard manual labor in the Winter so I have to go on this crash exercise program every year) so I knew it was time to quit for the day.  I will get the roof supports in tomorrow and hopefully be ready to side it, who knows I may even put on the plywood roof.  Nah, no roof yet, I want to be able to put the roof up and get the tin on right away and there is not enough time tomorrow for that.  Besides if I get the rest of the framework finished I can move the trash can inside the frame and it won’t blow over anymore.  With no siding on it this will get the trash men used to our new location and they won’t ignore it (out of sight, out of mind) later.  That is a good plan.  I do have to one thing that must be completed tomorrow before I can go outside, here is to hoping the weather and this thing cooperate.     Here is a view from the front.  I did end up deciding to make the entire front the door.  This saves me a couple of steps.  The front lower support will be removed after I get all the other supports in place.  The other view is from the house looking out toward the driveway.  I am going to cut a crescent moon into the front door and am still deciding what to cut in to the left and right sides.  I need the air to circulate and it will look nice.  I was thinking about a Jerusalem cross near the top on each end.    Who knows.

I had big plans yesterday to work on our trash can holder.  I am going to make a wooden building that looks like an outhouse to store our trash can.  I am tired of the wind blowing it over and the animals rooting through the trash.  It goes everywhere!  I had headed out with the plan to set some posts and get this started, but we had decided to let the sheep out of the pasture while we were home.  So they had been running around eating grass outside of their normal pasture and my mother-in-law became concerned they would go out into the CRP fields. Normally this would not be an issue, but last year I ripped down a fence behind her fence that was made out of cattle panels (I needed them to make my other fences cross the creek).  So now the sheep have access to the CRP, so my two nephews and myself put up a new permanent fence yesterday.

There are two more lengths of smooth wire above the woven wire the sheep are not getting through this fence.

This will keep the sheep out of the CRP now.  Everyone in our households don’t need any more things to worry about.  The ground is still very wet.  I am going to hold off about a month before starting the rest of the fencing projects.  This week I am going to concentrate on the outhouse/garbage can holder.  Finishing up a bunch of day to day stuff in the house today and will be back outside later in the week.  I really need to start spraying some of the thistles that are starting to emerge. There is always something.
Annmarie has had plenty of time to knit as she is in one hospital or the other.  I took a picture of the latest batch of baby booties.  She has done several baby hats recently.  She tells me that she should have enough booties in the store that she is going to switch to fingerless gloves next.  She likes the variety.  She has several shoe rejects she is thinking about turning into pin cushions.  I keep snagging them for baby showers at work and since half the department is currently pregnant (small exaggeration, but not much) or has just had a baby, I have been making serious in roads into the booties going to the store.

Annmarie hand knitted all these.  She takes them into a local craft store and lists them for sale.

 The plumbing is fixed again.  We had to call the plumber on Friday, he came out on Saturday.  Our cold water shut off valve under the sink was full of loose glue strands from the PVC line that was replaced in the orchard.  I also had to do surgery on the water aerator that goes with our fancy sink spigot.  It has 6 pieces all with microscopic/pin sized holes in them to create that aeration feel when the water comes out.  I used a 1/8 inch drill to add my own holes.  It works much better now.  Our water is hard and the holes were plugging up.  Now that problem is fixed and you really cannot tell, honestly.  So we have water at the kitchen sink.  It no longer takes five minutes to fill the dog water dish.