I collected 24 eggs today!  A new record.  I did go out and see if the chickens had tried the old laying spot I blocked off.  NO eggs, but there were 3 eggs in the woodshed.  I am thinking about just putting a box out there.  My baby chickens are growing fast, pretty quick I am going to have to let them out of their enclosure to find their own way.  It is always a large fight.  Everyone has to get a spot in the pecking order.  It takes a few weeks for things to settle out.  The nice thing is they live together already, separated by wire, but still used to each other and the sounds they make.  It makes it easier to integrate them.  I talked to the insurance lady today.  She is trying to get a rider attached to our home owner’s policy to cover the livestock.  Not sure if it is gonna work, otherwise we have to convert to a farm and it is gonna cost a few hundred bucks more.  Nothing is ever easy.  The funny thing is she didn’t like the number of chickens I have.  I have 54 chickens now.  I explained that some were on their way out the door and 24 were still babies.  So that is still pending.

It rained while I was working yesterday.  I had plans to mow the lawn, but the grass was too wet, of course the grass is ankle high now and getting longer every day.  I tried mowing the lawn with the sheep last year and it didn’t work out so well.  The sheep liked my decorative bushes and plants, especially the roses.  The grass just kept growing and 6 sheep in a yard can drop a lot of poop in a few days.  This was a sad fact to learn, I had high aspirations of never having to mow a lawn again.  So today, I was headed to the barn to do more digging (my personal workout program) which means I had to cross our front bridge.  I have become fixated on the bridge.  If I can get those beams for cheap (relative term) then I can redo the front bridge for around $1200.  A fabulous price (free labor of course) but one for which I was going to hold off on doing until next year.   I mean, come on the barn is just screaming my name!!!!  I priced  some 16 foot boards, 12 inches wide and 1 inch thick at the custom cutter’s for $0.70/ft ($11.20 a board).  I would need two of them, as they are overlapped on the barn.  I would need to side about 60 feet, for a total cost of $1344 (crap, way too much money).  So it looks like I will be using the back wall of the current grain silo as the new outside wall.  Will still need some lumber.  Here is my distraction, the front bridge…

Yes, it really is as bad as it looks.  Actually, you cannot touch the rails as they fall off with any pressure.  Pluse there are a few boards that are rotten on the floor and give when you step on them.  I am amazed it doesn’t just fall apart.  It was a lot better in the fall and just seems to get worse every day. The custom cutter has not called me back about the beams yet.  As we live in the country (slowville) it will be at least next week before i find out, maybe the week after when I go to pick up my maple I am having cut into lumber.
So I did make it out to the barn again.  It is very painful.  I am sure that I am going to have to drag a hose and sprinkler up into the barn and put a few thousand gallons of water onto the sheep shit so it can be removed.  I am hoping to triple or quadruple the weight of the sheep shit with water.  That way I can really get a workout!!  The trouble is the dried sheep shit is hard as a rock,  I am only getting a few inches with each swing of the pick ax.  Not good progress at all.  I need at least 8-10 inches with each pick ax swing.  I started using a wide grain shovel today.  It worked great.  I broke the shit loose with the pick ax and regular shovel and used the grain shovel to get a big pile.  Probably, 4-5 times what I could do with the regular shovel.  I did finally get an entire barn width cleaned out about 8 feet deep into the barn now.
You can see the three different floor heights in the picture and dead center there is a small thing sticking out of the floor, that is a rusted off metal fence post in the wooden barn floor.  I will keep plugging away at it.  When it dries out I will crawl under the barn and take some pictures. Before I get to do anything on the barn I am going to shore up the beams and make sure things are stable underneath.

I worked over the weekend.  Two extra shifts, it is my woodworking tool fund $.  Need the cash for the table saw now, unfortunately, I may have found something more pressing to spend the $ on.

Here is a picture of the barn floor.  I have made a little more progress since this was taken, but not much.  I keep getting distracted.  I really need to get the upstairs floor completed so I can get outside and get some outside work done!!!  Outside work beckons, weeds are growing, birds are singing and frogs are croaking, this is not the time to be trapped inside the house working.

My parents had another maple tree cut down at one of their rentals.  So Sarah and I went over last night and pulled the trunk out to the front driveway using the smaller branches as rollers.  It took us over two hours and it was painful.  I told Sarah at least she was learning a practical application of rollers, chains, levers, fulcrums and practical pulling with a motorized vehicle.  She told me that the she understood the theory and didn’t really need any practical application.  First 15 minutes she voiced that concern and tried to get out of helping.  It didn’t work.  So today I went over and winched the trunk into the trailer with a come along.  It was not easy and it was the hottest day of the year to boot.  As I was pulling into the custom cutter (they convert the logs into rough cut lumber at $65/hr for labor, great way to get primo wood)  I saw some very large pressure treated beams perfect for building a new front bridge.  So I expressed interest in purchasing said beams, this is going to push the barn back even further, which sucks.  I might end up redoing the bridge instead.

I did mention that chickens are stupid didn’t I?  I was looking out the kitchen window this morning while making coffee and noticed that one of the chickens looked stuck.  So I watched for another five minutes and sure enough, the stupid chicken tried to go between the slats and got stuck.  The chicken could not get free.  I had to go out and lift and turn the chicken sideways to get her free of the fence.  She was squawking and complaining the whole time I was getting her out of a jam.  Go figure.

Also, I had to dig the chain saw out of the wood shed this morning.  I noticed an egg, then I found two more then a hole pile of them!  Of course we had no idea someone was laying over there.  It was behind a door that was leaning against a wall.  This evening I went out and collected 22 eggs, I tossed them all against a tree stump and the cats and chickens had a feast.  I had to wrap a tarp around the hog wire panel I was using as a gate so hopefully the hens cannot get over there and lay any more eggs.  At this rate, I may need to add a couple more nest boxes to the chicken coop.

The hole wasn’t big enough.  I knew that when we were trying to get the tree and root ball out of the garden at Ruby’s (Annmarie’s Grandmother) house.  I took my nephews.  We tried to move the root ball and tree out of the hole.  It was three feet in diameter and so heavy it was all we could do to get the tarp wrapped around it.  6 tries later, and five stops because it was too, heavy and five more to dump out the dirt that keeps breaking loose, we dug an angle into the side of the hole to get the root ball out of the hole.  Three more attempts to get the root ball into the back of the pickup (three foot dead lift), no success (did dump two more piles of dirt out of the tarp).  The root ball is significantly smaller now than when we started!  Almost 50% smaller now, much easier to work with, the neighbor was watching and I went to use a ladder as a slide to get into the back of the pickup and he loaned me a 8 foot 12 inch board, so  we could slide it up into the pickup.  We then filled in the hole and moved the three new planters around in the garden before leaving Grandmas.  Of course, the hole needed to be bigger.  I in my esteem wisdom, I had decided that the tree needed to go right were the old paper birch had died.  I had to chop out the roots nonstop to get the hole dug.  We got the tree in the ground.

In the theme that nothing is ever easy or works right the first time, the hole was too deep.  So we had to lift the tree and throw more dirt in the hole.  Now if only the tree will survive its harrowing brush with death.  I put lots of water on the tree and it is right next to the water spigot.  Hopefully, I can keep it alive.  Took me over 5 hours to dig everything and complete the endeavor.   My arms and back ache from all the digging.  But, I had promised Ruby I would get the tree out and I don’t say no to her, so the tree is gone.  So here is the completed version of our new front lawn ornament…

I am really going to get back to the stairs tomorrow.