Laying on old wheat in granary on my back looking up at roof.  Turned out great.

Just killed the barn today!  Reagan had his first work day today.  He is my summer intern (hired help).  He was still getting over being sick and was dragging butt most of the day, but he toughed it out and we got a lot accomplished.  So much that I am looking forward to him being healthy and whole. 

Second hay room, soon to be doorway/door.

I decided to just go gangbusters and cut everything out today.  We started with new outside door to the second hay bay.  I used the sawzall to cut out the vertical boards and then cut through the nails on the large 6×6 beams.  The beams would not come out.  So I got on the tractor and poked and lifted them with the bucket until they fell out.  Much easier than when Doug helped me with the other hay bay.  That took forever to get the beam out, just when you thought you had it, it would hang up.  Tractor power made it much quicker. 

Hay bay #2 external door.

I had Reagan start tearing out the granary chute and dispensing box.  They had this box with a lid on it that allowed you to scoop out grain.  Only problem was it was all made out of wood.  This was fine until you got to the fact that there was way too much animal access.  He found two “flat cats” in the bin (old dried up dessicated dead cats) and was not sure what to do with them.  I told him I had found lots of those all over the farm and I had no idea what killed the cats. 

The chute was made out of tongue and groove one inch thick boards.  They were only 2.5 inches wide and so incredibly old.  All of the one inch board cracked and splintered every time we tried to salvage it.  We finally gave up and it went much faster. 

I had to go in and totally tighten and adjust the intersection of two doors.  Both doors did not operate well, causing me to take the loose nails out of the hinges and reinstall them with screws.  I had to use lots of WD-40 to loosen up the hinges and clips to hold the doors closed.  One support had shrunk by 1.25 inches so I had to add a spacer.  I put screws in everywhere to tighten the whole thing.  It worked very well.  I just need to add a latch to keep the granary door closed.  Most likely I will use one of the horseshoe chains I had made to keep the door shut. 

Reworked gates.

Partially dismantled grain chute

 I decided to cut the doorway for the tack room today.  This will allow us to clean out all the old grain and install a ceiling.  To get at the wall we had to move the old grain cracker out.  It is on a wooden sled like arrangement.  Again, the tractor came into play, we hooked a chain up and attempted to yard it out of the barn.  It would not budge.  I had to give it a few running attempts to get the thing dislodged and moving.  Once it was out of the way we started to clean up the floor and cut the door for the tack room.  There is about 1.5 feet of grain left in the bottom of the granary.  I started to shovel some of it out, but it is going to take several hours to get it all out. 

Belt driven grain cracker for old tractor PTO drive was in barn, “Young Giant”

The granary had several metal cables welded to rod bolted through large beams all around the granary to keep it from expanding outwards.  We took down all the low ones today.  Once I get a second story floor in place we will remove the higher ones.  Because of the need to open up the granary we just started cutting into the wall of the second granary tower.  It is “L” shaped and sixteen feet high.  I am going to make two rooms from it.  One will be on the bottom floor and an attic room above it.  The attic room will have to be accessed by a ladder most likely.  This will be a home for those things that we don’t want to get rid of, don’t know what they are or just don’t need, but cannot dispose of them.  Or it will be a place to store my good wood until I can get around to it.  I am betting good wood storage area.

“L” shaped granary.

If you look near the entire length of the top of the picture, you will see a large 6×6 inch beam.  There was one low also, but we hooked a chain onto it and jerked it out with the tractor.  It broke in half, but will still be useable for framing in my doorways into the “L”.  We will take out the upper one next week after getting the cables removed from them.  Surprisingly, the cables were easy to remove, the nuts came right off with a little wire brushing and WD-40.   Reagan’s job for tomorrow is just to clean out all the barn.  Throw out all the wood (junk to the left of the door outside and reusable to the right), shovel out all the dust and grain.  Make the place look good. 

Barn entrance, tack room just to the left, future stairs.

Future tack room

2/4 finished floor.

I managed to finish the center section of the barn floor yesterday morning.  It only took about four hours.  I have 64 sq feet of tongue and groove flooring left.  It was just enough to do the job.  I still have the end section, buried in old flooring and sheep feeders, and the left side – future home of the jugs (sheep creches).  I think the floor is on hold for a while now.  I need to get the other side of the hay storage cleaned out and outside doors installed.  Once that is done the front of the barn needs to be emptied so there is room to work on the roof.  The only problem with the roof is the material for it is still installed in the other two buildings that need to be torn down.  My help starts work on Thursday.  We are going to get the second hay area up to speed, then empty the front of the barn.

I still have 20 hens.  I may lose another one, but I think she may be egg bound and there is nothing you can do for that.  She will get better or die in the next week.  On a plus side, the chicken door guy got back to me and he is going to fix the automatic chicken door!  I removed the door yesterday and packaged it.  I am going to send him my two broken Chicken Butler doors also, three large packages ready to be mailed in the pickup.  I will drop them off today.  He had some ideas for a stronger door.  This makes me very happy.  Having to remember to go out every night and lock up the chickens is a losing proposition.  Eventually, you will forget and the predators never forget. I need to get some more baby chickens to make up the difference.  A dozen would do the job, unfortunately, I need to clean out the coop first.  A solid day of shoveling and cleaning.  The days just keep adding up.

I have removed an entire pickup load of scrap wood from inside the house. I had left overs from the stair project.  I finished the stairs 1-2 years ago.  The biggest loss is Annmarie is never again going to allow me to install the compound miter saw on the breeze porch so I can cut wood inside the house.  I have forever lost ground!  Now the closest I can get is the old house porch and if she has her way I will be inside the old house away from sight.  Cannot do that until I get some power inside the old house.  Before I can really do that I need to add some flooring in the attic so there is room to remove the rest of the boxes out of the old house. I have the most of the stuff for the attic already purchased.  It just needs to be cut and installed.

There are no tools left inside the house now either.  It took me five trips using boxes and five gallon buckets to take all the tools out.  Thus necessitating a good cleaning and organizing day in the old house/shop.  It is getting hard to walk around in there.  The back door window broke in a windstorm over the winter.  I need to do something with this also, the window broke because the door is falling apart.  That is caused by the building not being level.  It just has to wait, the barn is the first priority.   I can see that the old house is going to be a next year project.  Even if I only give it about six weeks, I could get it leveled and skirted appropriately.  Once that is done, I can start working on wiring it for the wood shop equipment (220V).

Sarah leading the horses out of the yard.  They still eat my bushes and leave bigger doughnut piles.

I posted an add on Craigslist for the lambs on Friday, so far the only bite I got was some guy claiming to be in the military who wanted to pay me via Paypal.   We were okay with that and already have an account, so I sent him the contact information.  He had said someone else would come pick the animals up.  His return email gave me the song and dance about wiring the money to his contact after I received payment via Paypal, total scam.  I told him to hit the road and not bother contacting me again.  Surprisingly, he did.

It is June and we continue to have April weather.

I keep sneaking out to the barn to get in some more floor time.  Since Annmarie’s dad died last week I have been cleaning house nonstop.  I have almost all the tools out of the house and tomorrow I am going to remove the last of the wood from the breeze porch.  I took the compound miter saw off of the breeze porch last year and had not removed all the wood.  I had moved the wood from the upstairs bathroom to the breeze porch, does that count?
We bought furniture today with Annmarie’s “window sill” money she had been making me save.  So those inside window sills are going to take a while longer.  I have even been reorganizing the attic to make more things fit up there.  At this rate I am going to have to finish part of the attic floor before I can empty out the last of the stuff in the old house (eventually my wood shop).  There is not a lot of free space in the attic left.  In the far future, I would like to build some enclosed cabinets in the attic.

I think it is landing on the CRP.

The floor of the barn is coming along nicely.  I am going to have enough new tongue and groove to complete the center section.  I only have 10 feet left.  In inches this is 120 inches, each 2×6 is only five inches wide due to the tongue and groove process.  So I need to lay down another 24 rows.  Each row has 1.5 boards meaning I need to dig another 36 boards out of the hay room before I can be done.  The floor is incredibly sturdy now.  The tongue and groove is really going together well and as I screw it down to the supports it just locks into place.  I have used most of the scraps I had left over from the right side to fix this floor.  Whenever I come across a large knot that may eventually fall out I take a short leftover section of flooring and screw it onto the bottom of my new floor.  I usually screw it into three separate boards so it is held in place.  That way if the knot falls out then the sheep’s legs cannot fall through and get broken.  It looks weird from underneath the floor.

My help starts next week on Thursday.  I am looking forward to that.  Hopefully, it quits raining by then and I can get him to tear off the low roof off the old lamb shed.  In the picture above you can see the low side of the lamb shed on the right side of the picture.  That part of the shed is getting ripped down and reused on the barn.  We are doing the ultimate recycle project.

My mess is not moving itself.

Yes there are two different kinds of wood on the floor.

I am going to reuse those long boards just past the unfinished floor for fencing in the sheep sorting yard.  They used to be on the floor.  The pen will be strong enough to hold an angry cow, just not big enough!  It is a great way to reuse them and not worry so much about the rotted and warped sections.  That will only leave me about 35 boards left over and I don’t think it is enough to do the five foot section on the right hand side.  I think I am going to try and reuse the floor from the old granary for the floor under the mess and alongside this new floor, there should be enough.

One of the drawbacks to reusing old wood is it is very very tough.  As in “iron like”.  I have broken over 20 driver tips already.  I think it is going to take me almost 40 tips just to do the floor. 

The lack of an automatic chicken door is starting to catch up with me.  I counted chickens tonight after returning from vacation and we are down to 20 hens and 1 rooster.  The predators are winning.  Our house sitter nabbed a very large raccoon while we were gone so I am counting that one for our team.  As usual, the home team is trying to play catch up.  Soon, I should have some free time and can message the auto chicken door guy and hopefully get some feed back as to why the door does not work.  Until then, we try and lock up the chickens each night.  I did lock them up tonight and set the live trap.

The sunset was beautiful tonight.

Sunset.

I did it.  I finished all the tractor mowing in a single day.  I started first thing (for non farm people that is 0730, and for those farm people I was awake at 0530).  I must be getting more proficient at tractor work because it only took me about 20 minutes to remove the box blade and install the mower onto the tractor.  I only had to swear a few times and take my gloves off twice. I told Annmarie tonight that I am not a REAL farmer.  I had ear muffs and goggles on while I mowed.  The tractor is very loud and running the mower makes it worse.  The dust is everywhere.  I tried to mow last year without goggles, but I couldn’t see. 

I mowed the entire barn lot, ram pasture, around my mother-in-law’s house, along the driveway, in front our house, around the machine shop, a huge forest of thistles outside the pasture and an entire loop around the upper pasture creek and fence (1.5 miles).  I had to gas up a second time after five hours on the tractor.  At one point when I was mowing along the back fence the cows came up to the fence to see me.  I though it a little odd as they had been running around for the last couple of days wild out on the main pasture.  I opened the gate for the sheep and forgot about the cows. 

Annmarie came out with Zeke a leash and we went out to get the cows then the sheep.  Since we didn’t know where either of them was we started on the lower pasture.  I had not seen anyone but a doe and some mice when I mowed the upper pasture.  Annmarie was directing the dog, this becomes important later.  We saw some critters on the upper end of the lower pasture.  We hiked down the hill and halfway up found out that it was cows.  Annmarie started directing Zeke (on the leash) to herd the cows to the barn lot.  The cows started to overshoot the gate and I started trying to give commands to Zeke.  This didn’t go over well.  It is kinda like backseat driving and tolerated about as well.  So I had a pissed off wife and a worthless dog.  The cows were too far so I turned Zeke loose and told him to get the cows.  He took off and chased them, circled them up a few times ran them back toward us and back over to their original starting point.  Totally ignored me the entire time.  Then he ran them to the bottoms and went off to get a drink out of the creek.  I finally caught up and clipped him back on the leash. We then walked down towards the cows, who promptly ducked under the horse fence my brother-in-law just finished, two strands of old barb wire at chest height.  The cows just went under it.  We hiked another half a mile and the cows ended up going past the gate and into the upper pasture. 

It dawned on me that I was screwed.  The cows would not come in and it was all my fault.  If I had not tried to back seat drive then it could have been a failed attempt of someone else.  Nope, my fault.  Plus, I let the cows out in the first place.  I had an epiphany.  The cows may come to the tractor.  So I grabbed a bale of hay, in the process the sheep had put themselves in the barn lot, so I lured them into the back barn lot (sheep escape proof).  I jumped on the tractor drove over and loaded the bale.  Meanwhile, Annmarie and Zeke worked their way uphill of the cows.  I drove over and started doing my “here moo cow” impression.  It worked.  The cows walked past the gate then came back and into the barn lot.  They never did come over and eat the hay I dumped out for them.  We walked a few miles just trying to get the cows.  The cows need to stay close to the house.  The sheep come back with little effort and the dog and the sheep seem to have the nighttime routine worked out.