I am officially on staycation. My plan is to get the office floor done while I am off. If I can get that done then I can start loading stuff into the office! This will be amazing as we will be able to thin out the stuff in our bedroom. The floor is slow going. Getting those multiple layers of paint off of the floor was not easy. I am now going over the floor to get the sandpaper marks out of the floor. I won’t be able to get them all but I can knock down the number there are. I am hopeful I can get the floor all sanded tomorrow and then put some stain on the floor on Tuesday! The biggest problem on Monday will be getting the floor and walls clean of dust before I stain the floor. I will put the fan up in the doorway tomorrow. I have been using the vacuum and wearing an N95 while I have been sanding the floor. It’s pretty cold to keep the door open, 11 degrees F. I will dress warm tomorrow and just be cold. Once the floor is sanded I will use the high pressure air and try and blow all the dust out of the room. I am not sure how well that will work but it cannot hurt and if some goes out then it will be helpful.
I had a goal to get all of the paint off of the floor in the office. The real problem is its not very warm outside! I have been waiting until the thermostat gets to 20 F before going out to sand on the floor. When I open up the door and turn on the fan the heat goes right out of the building. I managed to get the paint removed and just started working on smoothing out the wooden floor. I will need to put everything away so I don’t have to work around any equipment.
I worked on a couple of little things this weekend that needed to happen. I fed the cows again. I love the big bales, just saying! I decided to see if the Kubota tractor could move the old lamb shed that got blown off its wooden supports. I was able to lift up a side and then manually move the beams on the ground. The 4×6 beams that make up the underside of the building need to be replaced. They are rotten. It also needs to be on concrete pillars at a minimum. Getting it back up onto the beams will keep the moisture from getting into the underside boards. This will buy me a few more years until I figure out what I am going to do with this building. I am unclear now. I was going to make a small chapel out of it but with the office now I am not sure Annmarie needs it. I will have to think about it. I do need a spot to store metal stock that is out of the weather. Maybe I use it for that? I don’t know.
The ewes are on strike. We have not had any born today and we are only getting one set of babies a day and have only had four ewes give birth in the last seven days. We expected the flood gates to open by now. We have two sets still in the pens. The single will go into the momma baby area tomorrow. I moved the triplets to the biggest pen today. We thought they could go out into the momma baby area but one of the triplets is very small. We are not sure it can get in and out of the barn by itself. So until it is big enough to get around easily they will have to stay in a pen.
Lamb update:
8-Lambs born
4-Ewes delivered babies
Lots-# of ewes still pregnant
1-Single Lamb birth
2-Twin Lamb births
1-Triplet lamb births
1-Bummer lamb
0-Lambs died in first 2 weeks
7-Total lambs on farm
200% Birthing rate
175% Production rate
200% Survival rate at birth
175% Survival rate at 2 weeks (bummers count here as they would die without help)
Stewart Creek Somethings 