I had every intention of working on the barn roof today.  There were just a few hiccups along the way.  I took my mother to Home Depot yesterday to buy 16 foot lengths of tin roofing.  After researching the price of a boom truck ($450/day plus $200 delivery charge) or a 20 foot scissor lift ($350/day) or scaffolding (free but it would take three people 4-5 days to assemble all the scaffolding so another $800 in labor) I opted on the old fashioned ladder method of roofing.  A full 16 foot piece of metal roofing will be brought up a ladder from below and slid up the roof to the waiting person in a harness on the peak, both parties will screw in the metal from their respective heights.  Once in place the ladder person will go get another piece and the roof person will slide down and finish screwing in the metal sheet.  This will continue all the way across the roof, not ideal but I would rather have money in new roofing then all the other alternatives.  Home Depot doesn’t carry 16 foot lengths in stock, they could special order it for me.  I don’t do big box special orders.  I ordered it from the local lumber store today, it will be here on Thursday, it was not cheap $900 but pretty much what I expected for 960 square feet of roofing. Imagine what it would cost to have it installed!  So I called and put off some of my help that was lined up for the weekend. 

Horse enclosure on left for feeding in winter.

My nephew, Gannon and I went out with intentions of digging out the rest of the barn.  We spent almost four hours redoing fence crossings across the creeks.  The bull has learned to hook his horn in the panels and lift then push sideways under the fence.  It was just like a tricky gate for him.  No problem at all to get through.  We redid all three creek crossings that he was getting through and put him back in the lower pastures with the heifers and babies.  He was much happier being together with the herd.  His bellowing went away once he could stand around with the women. 

Backside of horse enclosure before changes.

The irrigation ditch I fixed and dug is doing much better.  It is halfway down to the school house from where it was a couple of weeks ago.  The grass is already starting to green back up.  I think by the end of the summer I will have to go down to the school house and fix all that irrigation canal with the tractor.  This is great news and will facilitate the dream of  planting a few more trees for eventual shade for the animals.  I will have to find said trees and then protect them with a small fence.  There are three more elm trees growing up in the front creek.

After lunch we went out to the barn but due to several thunderstorms and some torrential rain, no roofing was going to happen today.  We decided to work on this end of the barn and fix the horse area.  We cut out the back wall and added supports and a new wall.   I went along the side of the building and screwed down all the loose old boards.  We still need to add the batten between each wall piece of wood and get the feed stall area subdivided so each horse has its own area.  No more stealing of food or chasing away will be allowed. 

Annmarie has been working on our kitchen countertops.  I will be clear coating them tomorrow.  They turned out very nice.  I had just gotten used to the bright orange formica.  It looks very different without it.  I will get her to post a blog entry with pictures this month.

New side, used to be entrance.

Starting point this morning. Notice woodpecker holes in side of barn.

Jason was here early this morning so we could try and beat the heat on the barn roof.  We got up onto the low portion of the barn roof and discussed how to get up the next 16 feet to the peak.  There was an old rickety falling apart wooden ladder barely attached and I suggested using it.  Jason didn’t seem real keen on the idea.  We didn’t have safety gear on yet because the anchor needs to be attached to the peak of the roof.  He went to get the tractor so we could throw a rope over the roof and tie it off to the tractor.  While he was doing that I crawled up the rickety wooden ladder and made it to the peak.  We attached our safety harness hooks to the peak of the roof and then tied in.

 We took down all the peak ridge metal and then tore out the hay turbinators.  Jason cut out the four vent holes and we are ready for metal roofing.  It was a collective agreement that I will have to rent a boom to do the far side of the barn.  It is just too steep and we need a way to bring up the cupola pieces.  So I am going to have to price out the rental on a boom.

Patches to the barn.

While Jason finished cutting the holes in the roof I patched the side of the barn.  There were several holes from the woodpeckers and I cut tin to fit and attached them to the barn.  Only one hole had an old nest from this spring.  I had been wanting to get that done since last year.  At noon we were burning up from the heat and decided that putting on siding was better than being on the roof.  So we moved to the front end of the barn and put on the second layer of siding.  We only have two pieces left and the front of the barn will be done until winter.

 I want to redo a couple of boards over by the honey bee nest and redirect them to a higher entrance on the barn wall.  This will have to be done when the bees are dormant as I don’t want to get stung 50 times.  We even put in horse tying anchors on the side of the barn for Annmarie. It was over 100 degrees and miserable.  We each drank over a gallon of water and lost five pounds.  The latch we found for the gate had a previous life as something, we just are not sure what it was.  It works great and I just need to attach the chain better to hold it up higher so it is easier to put on the gate. 

The whole farm.  It looks very nice from the air.

It is going to be a long three days.  I have Jason coming for three days to help me out and get some progress on the barn.  There is always more to do no matter how much gets done.  The important part is to work on the critical issues.  Annmarie usually keeps me on track as I get easily distracted.  Yesterday, Jason and I got the wooden oak trim in place on the kitchen counter faces.  I need to cover the nail holes and it will be ready for primer then a fancy epoxy/paint treatment to make it look like some form of natural rock.  It was cheap and it is supposed to be hardy.  We wanted a quick change from the bright orange veneer that is currently our countertops.  This winter I will tile the backsplash and kitchen window. 

Barn floor getting repaired.

We then moved on to the barn floor.  It had a huge buckle near the front and needed to be torn up and reapplied.  It got very wet from the water running off the roof down into the barn and I didn’t finish screwing the floor down last year.  It took us about four hours to fix it and I ended up burning up another Makita impact hammer.  This is the second one in two years that has literally burned up.  They get so hot you cannot touch them and smoke comes out of them.  Well I was smart and bought Home Depot’s 2 year guarantee!  So after three phone calls I learn that Makita has a three year guarantee and Home Depot doesn’t cover until year four and five, plus you have to have the original receipt.  I had the receipt because of taxes for the farm and finally get a hold of Makita.  I have to send the impact hammer to a repair shop in Pasco.  It should only “take a couple of weeks” per the man on the phone.  I went and bought another Makita impact hammer from Home Depot, no home depot guarantee, and will send my one year old broken one out for repair.  I suspect I may get the new one to last through this year.  As soon as my old one is repaired I am using it nonstop.  I have four more years of use time in it and I am going to get every last one. 


Today, Jason, my nephew Gannon and a friend came over so we could pickup hay from the field and load it into the barn. First thing we did was to stand up the old grain mixer in the barn.  It took all four of us.  Last year we tried it with three people and could not stand it up.  It takes up a lot less space upright. It took us 4.5 hours to move seven ton of hay and get it all stacked neatly in the barn.  We ended up having to stack it five bales high to get it all to fit.  Zeke go to catch some mice when we took last years hay out of the old lamb shed and moved it into the main barn.  He likes to catch and kill them, he is not into eating them.  The teenagers left after lunch and we went back out to do more work. 

It was 93 degrees outside so I made an executive decision to not get up on the roof.  We will hit that first thing in the morning tomorrow.  Instead we worked on adding a second layer to the barn siding and getting the barn corner fixed so we could attach the gate to the side of the barn and close off the nursery area.  I still need to go down and fix the creek crossing as the sheep can just go right under the fence at the creek.  We had some issues with the yellow jackets and Jason got stung on the cheek.  I ended up getting stung on the arm also.  They were not happy with us banging and cutting stuff on the outside of the barn.  I of course do not have any hornet spray at the house.  The gate was pretty heavy after we installed it and the far side kept sagging so we had to find a bracket to attach to the barn so we could then attach a cable to the gate, therefore not changing the cable length when the gate was opened and closed.  We had to dig through the old scrap metal pile and ended up using an old heavy discarded hinge that we bent using the vice and a large chunk of metal.  The gate works great now and just needs a securing latch.  We decided to quit a little early as both of us were very tired. 

I finished!  The sheep are now out on lots of pasture, probably around 20 acres.  They of course, are staying on the back rocky hillside most of the time.  I never could have done it without the help of my nephew Gannon.  He helped me the last two days and cleaned up the day after we finished.  It was a close call, I was not sure it was going to make it but the sheep needed more pasture.  On the plus side  the next fence I will be building will be up by the hand dug well.   I want to subdivide the upper pasture a few times and that is the first place I want to do it at.  I even mowed a path earlier with the tractor.  But future fencing is on hold until the barn roof, floor and gate get installed.  This upcoming week we will be moving the hay around and going and picking up the hay that was just baled to put it in the barn for winter feeding.  

We had our last calf born last week sometime.  We are not sure exactly when it happened as the heifer had been hiding him in the tall grass.  I snuck out and took a peak and it is a little boy.  This works out great for us as we will not have to separate them from the adult herd at 6 months of age.  We thought this last heifer (#1121) was a couple of months behind the other two heifers.  We were wrong and the other heifers are probably already pregnant because the bull has been working overtime since those babies were born.  

We have been making plans to start resurfacing our kitchen counters this summer.  We are putting an epoxy based paint on that looks like granite.  We did go and research tiles for back splash and window covering.  Unfortunately, that is going to cost real money, around $1000.  Which is not bad considering we are installing them ourselves.  

 I am back at the fencing with a vengeance.  I enlisted my nephew to help today and tomorrow to get it all completed in time.  The sheep are in the orchard with the cows and the grass is quickly disappearing.  The sheep did a great job on the back hillside there is not a single green leafed any thing left.  I am hoping they will do the same on the rest of the hillside once we let them out.  The current fence will open up the entire lower pasture down to the dividing fence, almost 10 acres.  It should keep the cows and sheep busy for the rest of the summer.  We will water the closer pastures and get them back up to a respectable grass height.  I would like to keep all the animals off of the close pastures till late fall so they can eat the summer grass in the fall and we can delay feeding a couple of weeks.  We will see how it goes.  The wooden stays we purchased earlier had to be moved so the machine shop siding can be installed, we were 44 stays short so I had to contact the seller to send the rest.  My scrap metal guy called last night to ask me if I was still interested in more woven wire fencing.  So this morning I ran out to a neighbor’s house and dug out five rolls of woven wire, another 350#.  I have canceled my standing order for fencing as of today.  We have extra fencing now and I think I even have enough to do the upper bottom division next year.  My current request is for four gates.  I am still making monthly payments to the scrap metal guy and have still not received a bill.  I bug him every couple of weeks and have made three months worth of payments without a single bill.  I razzed the secretary today and she told me it was done on her part and waiting for Packy to approve it.  I should have him all paid off by the end of the year.  Regardless, at the end of the year I am stopping all automatic payments and waiting for a bill.  

We were out in the orchard taking pictures of the new baby cow when the sheep came running over to great Annmarie.  Then they got spooked and started jumping around like tops.