The jugs (creches) are finished.  I have six pens for newborn babies and mommas to stay in for the first few days of the babies lives.  This bonding time cements the moms to the newborns.  We had one baby this spring bond to the whole flock and had to go to a new home to be bottle fed. There is room for 1-2 more pens if needed.  The pens are all different sizes.  We reused the old doors from the old lamb shed (now tractor/mule storage area).  They were made to fit that building and unbeknownst to me they were multiple different sizes.  Luckily, the size difference was apparent when we laid the doors out along the back wall.  So the jugs were built one at a time to fit the doors.  I had to custom make one door as the jug straddled a large pillar support.  I even remembered to make a gap in the side planks for water buckets and feeders to be hung.  This completes 1 of 3 barn goals for the summer.

This weekend it is all about the roof.  I have done the math and guesstimate (fairly well) that there is enough tin to cover 2/3 of the lower roof.  Putting on the tin and cleaning up next to the barn is the new priority.  I would like to get the lot near the barn all cleaned up and ready for fencing. 

The weather is totally screwing things up.  There is oat hay cut and down on the ground attempting to dry on the upper pasture.  Rain and thunderstorms every evening/night are not helping.  We are not sure the hay is going to dry before it molds.  If it molds we will be buying hay again this year to get through the winter. 

On a side note, I applied for a new job closer to home.  It is in Pendleton only 15 miles from our home.  I would be home 40% more than I am now.  Annmarie helped me pick out my interview outfit (doesn’t everyone’s wife help them dress?).  One thing we had not considered was how the barn work would change my shirt size.  I used to wear a 15 inch neck.  We had to try on most of the shirts in my closet to find a 15 1/2 I could button closed.  It was snug, but I could swallow and a tie would go on over the shirt now. 
The interview was at a local hotel conference room.  I showed up early to verify the location.  I had time to kill so I went off and bought a coffee at a new coffee roaster shop in town.  I showed up 10 minutes early and sat down in the lobby.  I saw the last candidate go by and the front receptionist asked him how it went, his response was “good but it lasted an hour”.  This struck a chord with me and I asked the receptionist were the bathroom was located with five minutes to spare before my interview. 
At this point it turned into a “National Lampoon’s” scene.  I finished my upright business quickly and turned to wash my hands.  I stepped right up to the counter and started scrubbing my hands quickly when it happened.  I felt wetness on the right side of my crotch!  I looked down and the water from the counter had formed a wet spot on the right side of my crotch near my zipper.  I totally panicked, sweat beads popped up on my head and I made a rash decision.  My hands were dripping wet so I flicked water all over the front of my pants.  I thought maybe I could disguise the water spot with more water.   NOPE, this just made things worse, now my light colored pants look liked I had peed myself then gotten in a water fight with a 3 year old.  I frantically check my watch, 3 minutes until interview time.  I rush to the bathroom stall grab some toilet paper and start rubbing furiously on the outside of my pants.  It was kinda working but it was still obviously a large wet spot on my crotch.  At this point I remember I had placed a cotton handkerchief in my back pocket (for after the interview in case it didn’t go well!).  I dropped my trousers, stretched them between my knees and started furiously rubbing them dry with my lifesaving device.  Two minutes later it was dry enough you could not see the wet spot.  Thank goodness for natural fibers.  I swabbed the sweat off my forehead, went out and sat down to wait for my interview.  Three minutes later someone came down to get me.  Where is a man bag when you need one?  I forgot about the hand towels in the bathroom, I forgot to shut the stall door, good thing no one came in.  The interview went well from my perspective.  I will know by this weekend If I get the job.  Sometimes you just cannot make this stuff up.

The weeds are slowly dying.  They have started to wilt but are not just keeling over and dying.  The sprays usually mess with some enzyme or something so the plants basically starve to death, a slow process.  Burning is much more satisfying.

We pulled the old main door off the granary to use as the tack room door.  It is only a few inches too tall and too wide.  The sawzall will fix that in a jiffy.  That leaves on other door on the granary to salvage.  We are going to have to spend one day salvaging material from the granary before I tear it down with the tractor.

It is pouring down horizontal rain right now.  The baby lambs and moms are running for the barn to get out of the weather.  This is messing up plans to finish the roof and use the tractor to finish moving the sheep dung.  Okay, glad we don’t have wheat, the 1/2 inch hail just started pouring out of the sky, tree leaves are getting ripped right off.  The lawn is turning white.  Ugh, mother nature is embracing her woman hood.

Soon to be jugs (creches) (pens for newborns and mommas).

 I made an executive decision this morning, NO Roofing today!  After yesterday I was not in a mood to crawl up on a roof and deal with hot metal.  I even put on a long sleeve shirt prior to going out with the good intention of actually roofing.  Once out in the heat, I just could not make myself crawl up on the roof.  I didn’t really want to do anything, but that won’t help me get finished.

So we went over and loaded up the tin onto the trailer.  The tin pieces off the granary are 15 feet long and the tin off the hog enclosure are 12 feet long.  I did the math and to cover the lower barn roof I have enough tin to cover 42 feet (2/3 of the lower roof).  More than I had anticipated initially.  Enough to make a good run at it and know how much more I will need to buy.

Storage bins for buckets and feeders

 When we were loading up the tin it dawned on me I could use the old concrete forms as flooring in the barn where I wanted to add the jugs.  So Mr. President and I dug around inside the granary.  We found another old window, some fancy wheel gear thing (cool decoration for barn) and some two sided wooden things (not sure what they were used for).  Only about 1/3 of the concrete forms were useable for our purposes.  Most of them were coated in oil (it keeps the concrete from sticking to them) and I don’t want the sheep laying on them.  We were able to get enough to use as flooring for six jugs.  Plenty for our purposes in the future.  We will build all six now, but in reality we probably only need three currently, the others are for herd growth.  I can even add two more if needed.

New two story storage area, in process.

We used the L-shaped things we found in the granary to make a couple of storage bins for feeders, buckets, water buckets and various other containers we seem to use in the barn.  I made two separate containers after adding a new floor to the area.  I went out and salvaged about 8 buckets from the old lamb shed.  They will need to be soaked and scrubbed out first, but after that good as new.

Annmarie wanted me to tear out the jugs in the lamb shed and use all the wood in the barn.  It was not coming out easily or intact so I salvaged all the doors with attached hinges.  The only problem with that is the doors are various widths!  So I am making the jugs one at a time to fit each door.  It took me a while to get a design that was sturdy enough.  I thought I was going to have to add a beam that ran from the floor to the overhead walkway, but managed to stiffen the sides by using 2×6 boards and adding a 2×4 kickboard under the doors.  I only have one wall up so it isn’t real easy to see where I am headed yet.  This is one of the “Big Three” projects for the summer (Fix barn roof, build jugs, build feeders).  So I will work on it early next week again.

This is an old granary with the inside cut out, it is L-shaped.  The horizontal board you see inside the room is going to be a support for the floor.  I am going to make two rooms out of this so we have more storage area.  Most likely, this will be an area for storing some left over lumber.  The hay rooms have lumber in both of them.  I just remembered that I will probably be picking up hay on Monday, not doing anything else.  I had totally forgotten about it. 
I love my impact drill!  It is the only reason I can drive any screw in the barn.  The wood is so hard there is no way I can make any headway with a normal drill.  The last few days it has been getting very warm when I use it for longer than 15 minutes.  Well today I smelt something burning and it was getting so hot I could not hardly hold it with leather gloves on my hands.  I actually had to give it a rest every few minutes so I could continue to use it.  This does not bode well for the life of this handy device.  The worst part is it is brand new last year.  I have used it to death.

Grain auger at sunset, courtesy of Sarah.  I guess that college photography class paid off.

West side of granary roof.

 It is really happening!  We spent yesterday finishing the roof removal on the granary.  If you look at the picture you can see the wall falling apart.  It was that way before we started in on the roof.  I was just glad it didn’t give way while we were crawling around.  You can even see that I have not crawled up and unscrewed the safety ropes from the anchors at the peak.  Will have to do that eventually, sooner rather than later.  The West side was Mr. President’s and was nailed down.  The East side was mine and it was all screwed down.  I finished mine in a few hours and did a little bit for Mr. President.  He spent 8 hours on the roof in 100 degree weather.  He did get it finished.

East side of granary roof

Baby lamb, they are so cute.

I had to go spray another 10 acres.  I sprayed the bottoms and hill side down by the school house.  The weeds were thick!  In a few weeks I am going to have to take the mower down there and mow all the dead stuff.  Gotta get the roof on the barn first.  Still more spraying to do in the upper fields and up by the bone pile. 

We have two sets of twins currently.  One boy and girl from each mother.

The back creek stopped flowing yesterday.  I had to drive across it with the mule and it just kept slowly dropping until by late evening it was running no more.  I don’t see it picking up again any time soon with this hot weather expecting to stay. 

Today was the day Mr. President got up on the granary roof to remove some tin.  This meant that I had to spend 45 minutes getting all the safety gear set up and in place.  If he falls off the roof I don’t want his mother
coming back to me, so he wore the harness all day long while he was on the roof.  He only almost went off the roof face first once.  The roof is a pretty steep pitch.  Once the first piece of tin was off there would be a place to stand.  It just was not happening.  My ladder is about 10 feet too short.  I really need a 30 foot ladder and those are not very common or very cheap.  I tried to get the nails but straddling the roof and holding on while trying to pry screws out was not easy nor fast.  I finally ended up screwing a standing block directly onto the tin that allowed me to pull the nails above it.  Once the first piece was gone it went much faster.  One side of the roof is fairly modern.  The East side is new tin held in place with screws and the West side has those old galvanized twisted nails.  I am working on the modern side and it is fairly obvious why it needed to be replaced, the boards underneath are rotten and brittle.  I have already broke two different boards, yes, I am also wearing a harness.  It will hurt when I fall, but I won’t die. 

I spent the morning spraying again today.  I am all the way down by the bluffs now.  I am still concentrating on the upper hillside.  The star thistle is the worst on the dry hot hilllside.  I ran out of 2-4-D today and had get some more.  I will spray the bottoms last as they are mostly just Russian thistle and 2-4-d will kill it.  The fancy spray is for the hillside.

At 1500 today I was done working on the tin roof.  It was just too hot.  I drank over 2 gallons of liquid today.  I never drink that much fluid.  We went into the barn and worked on the inside cleaning up nails and getting ready for the second elevated storage room from the grain tower conversion.

When I was spraying I saw lots of baby birds, baby woodpeckers, blackbirds and a whole covey of Hungarian Partridges (around 20 birds).  The most Huns I have seen on the property have been five a couple of years ago.  I am hoping they make it to adulthood. I did see the baby deer twins up on top of the hillside. I saw the little two point buck this evening as he wandered down to the front creek in front of the house for a drink of water.  He is living by the metal grain bins.

Side note, the mule has 1250 hours on it after the engine rebuild.  

Cross brace progress.

 We had a very nice rain and wind storm this morning.  It totally altered the plans of the day.  I was going to spend most of the morning spraying weeds while Mr. President worked on tearing down the granary roof.  The storm totally changed that, wind, lightning and rain does not make it conducive to being on the roof.  I opted to work inside the barn.  We built window frames for the new tack room.  Once we had the frames we then had to cut holes in the end of the barn and then install them.  One was a used bathroom window I picked up at a yard sale for $10 and the other is an old wooden window I got from my parents for free.  We also framed out the door for the tack room.  Mr. President cut out all the overhead broken beams and exposed all the wall framing so we can add new beams to raise the ceiling.

Windows into future tack room.

Tack room windows, inside view.

Bungee automatic door closer.

 After lunch, we started back in on the roof.  I installed the cross beams and Mr. President cleaned up the barn and tack room. 

After dinner I went back outside to try and do some weed spraying.  I only managed to squeeze in one sprayer full.  MILESTONE is a name to remember.  Yes it is very very expensive, but boy howdy does it work!  The star thistle that I sprayed yesterday is already starting to wilt.  It is amazing.  I had to stop spraying because another storm was rolling up to the house.  Luckily, it did not rain, just lightning and wind tonight. 

Ewe #16 had twins this morning, a boy and a girl.  Annmarie and I managed to get her into the yard first thing this morning.  They hung out in the yard all day then this evening we took them over to the barn lot and locked them up with the other mother ewe and her twins.    When I noticed this morning at 0500 she had just had the babies as there was afterbirth still hanging out of the ewe.  We wanted to give them some bonding time before moving them. 

Zeke is doing some weird snorting thing tonight.  Not sure what is going on with him.

Soon to be removed granary.