It is amazing!  The progress is fantastic.  After seeing more of the floor, I am really glad I did not try to drive any piece of equipment into the barn.  It would have fallen through in places.  Hector is out there digging away right now (1000).  Probably another two days.  It will have taken him seven days to dig it out.  I will need to work on the foundation before I can move the wall in.  After surveying the rafters, I am going to have to halve the barn on that side.  The wind tore up the roof support beams that were left for almost another 20 feet.  I hate to make the barn smaller, but in reality it is so much more barn than we will ever use even after it is shrunk.  If we do nothing the barn will disappear by falling apart.  Not a very dignified ending.

Look at the dark patch along the walls.  That was the height of the sheep dung in the barn!  Hector is still digging (1530). I went out and had a conversation with him.  It was an effort in frustration.  He wants to work, as he can see all the stuff that needs to be done on the farm, but I had a hard time communicating that I could not afford him to work all the time.  I got him set up to take a day off tomorrow and come back on Thursday.  He will finish the barn and then dig out the attached lean to on the back side of the barn.  That will let me tear the tin off of that roof and take down that addition to the barn.  I will use the tin over the part above where the sheep will be hanging out.  I truly do understand the importance of mucking out the barn in the Spring now.  I will need to get some straw to use in the winter.

You can see the different levels and layers in the barn here.  I will get a hose and pressure washer out here before I do anything else and get it all cleaned up.  Seems like overkill, but it will make it far easier for me to tell what is good wood and reusable.  Besides once every 100 years the barn can have an inside shower.  See the black mark on the wall?  It is much higher in the back of the barn.  Everything is starting to dry out here.  I have not been watering the lawn (no mower, and sheep have been banished from the yard for eating my roses).  So I tried the age old tactic of not watering.  It helped but I almost killed my grape plant in the back yard.  So I am now watering the yard and starting to drag our hoses to the surrounding sheep pasture to get about 50 yards watered around the house.

Annmarie forgot to lock my chickens up the other night and I think I lost another one.  I have 27 hens now and 1 rooster.  This doesn’t include the 13 babies I just got a couple of weeks ago.  Predators are not my friends this year.  If only I could keep a weed eater going…

Here is a picture of the fields I just took yesterday.  We have cheat grass everywhere!!

I just got back from a predator sweep of the yard and my chicken yard.  No predators and all chickens were accounted for.  I have 28 hens, one rooster and 11 new babies.  of course, 11 of those hens are not laying eggs yet.  The sheep were trying to get me to let me into our yard.  Now this does slow down my need to mow the lawn (a very good thing) but they are killing my bushes and roses and make an awful mess on my back porch.  So no sheep in the yard.  I locked the chickens back up.

Well, we survived the weekend just barely.  Trying to dig out the house now.  Looks like a tornado hit the inside of our house.  It was pointed out to me that my predator post may have implied that our new baby that died was killed by a predator.  It wasn’t it just did the chicken thing and died.  I had to go out the next morning and hold another one up to the water dispenser and make it drink.  Took me about 15 minutes to perk up that chick.  It is doing just fine now and we have only lost the one.  The new babies are doing fine and running around and eating without any difficulties.  Annmarie and I were talking about switching to a nipple waterer. That way the inside water will not make any messes and during the winter I can stick an immersion heater inside.  No mess.  Now if I only had power to the coop…

Need to build fence before I wire the chicken coop.  It will be the next thing though. Our chocolate lab, Bailey thinks that any baby, no matter what kind is hers and needs to be protected.  This is her watching out for our new babies.

Well I just spent the last 15 hours locked in a new cook shack getting ready for my daughter’s swim team meet and then cooking for it.  We have a brand new shack (very nice, donated, expensive trailer with fire suppression system and the works) that needed its maiden voyage charted by a not so gentle soul.  So I just got home.  I was bemoaning the fact that one of my new babies died last night and I had to find it this morning.  Of course it was not one of the two free ones we got.  I just don’t have time to mess with the live trap and I could see more of my chickens dying.  By the way I was in my Toyota Prius, and it is a very low car, when I crested the last hill to our turn off and there were two sets of eyes in the road.  I swerved, and a raccoon ended up under the front right tire.  No more raccoon.  The second set of eyes was a cat.  I am not sure how it happened it was very quick.  But there is one less chicken predator within 1/4 mile of our house.  Gotta go as I have to get up in 4.5 hours and do it again for 15 hours.

So I found some new chickens!!  I was cruising Craig’s list and found a listing for Auracuana chickens, they lay BLUE eggs.  So we went to the Tricities today and picked them up at a gas station in an exchange.  She gave us a couple of other chickens called Showgirls (Turkens with fluffy feathers).  So the babies are in the coop now.  I should not loose any this time as they will grow up in the old area and as they get bigger they can go into the 360 degree fenced in outside area.  I am not letting these ones out until they are older than four months.  No cat food this time by letting them out early.  So the chickens were $60, medicated chick food 50# was $14 and new pellet bedding was $12.75.  Now if I can just keep them alive for 6 months I will start to see some return from them.  Now if I could just catch those predators…These are my babies.