what did we do?

Guest bloggers: Hi daddy we miss you and we love you. We cannot wait to see you in may! Love, Tad and Nathalie
Okay, now me. Tad and Nathalie talking with the girls while I glued myself together. I shut my finger in the shop door and it cut down through the skin and subcutaneous tissue to the bone... was gross and I dont have a medical ick factor. I taped myself back together and we went to work!


The saw I can use best, miter saw or to some, chop saw. I used this to cut pieces from the ripped 2x4 and attached them to the larger piece of 2x4 I had x 3.


Now my metal bottle holder has a bracket, bracket may not be right word but it seems right.


Another angle. The smaller pieces need to be screwed to the wall at appropriate height. I should have drilled holes in the wood and the wall but didnt and thus my pieces split... oh well they will hold for now. Will have to move them up pretty soon, babies grow fast.


As usual, scouts butt is in someones face but they all seem okay with the new arrangment. The problem with bottle feeding is this, I dont want to go out late at night and I dont want to get up at 4 am! So right now I go down to do chores alone, the kids would but they are asleep and I do like my alone time. So now I can fill bottles and then clean out stall, gather eggs, feed and water everyone while they eat. Then I can pull out bottles and rinse on the table in front barn room that I cleaned out. I will leave a bottle of soap down there and can carry a tea kettle with hot water and just wash them up in a clean bucket. Better than bringing them back and forth.

All 5 of my kids. The kids helped me with these contraptions. I am sad my wood pieces split but on the phone with frank, I learned how to do better. I will remove the back pieces of wood, nail on new ones and then drill holes first and use smaller screws. The screws were too large.

This is my rigged windbreak. I am cheap and didnt want to buy a new piece of plyboard so I used the long piece I found in the shop, and the small pc in the barn. You can see the heat lamp hanging, this is plugged in at last feeding (6 pm aprox) so they gravitate towards it at night. I can see their little nest in the corner under the heat lamp, they sleep close together and make a little curved out straw nest just like the big goats do!

This is an old cabinet door that I used to anchor the top of my windbreak to the wall thus giving a 3rd side. It wasnt sturdy enough without.

Inside corner, you cant just screw 2 old pieces of plyboard together so I first screwed the 2 scraps of 2x4 to the small piece of plyboard and then the larger one could be screwed to the 2x4s. Not a long term solution but I am just worried about the wind blowing in through the one doorway and 2 windows covered by chicken wire. The sunshine is nice but the wind is not.

They sleep in here, are shut it at last feeding but at 6 am after feeding they get to play freely in the fenced in safe but very large yard that is just theirs. The kids have so far spent at least 4 + hrs in there with them, and then climb the fence and play with the big goats. They ride their bikes down there and use Nathalies rigged swing. Our goats have tons of attention which is good for them.

Okay Tad is no photographer... This lock has stopped working, it is bent for one and for two was hard to fasten without wiggling which was frustrating if you are 6, 8 or 30 (frank). So, I installed a new lock! This one they can fasten from INSIDE the inner barn room past this door. Before they were unable so once in, couldnt shut themselves and babies in from coming through front room thus into the hay room and then possibly out into the big goat yard which we dont want yet.

Okay, new lock. This one is higher and they can reach out from inside and fasten in once they go in. Also, takes NO jiggling. It took some work though, if you look close, to the left of the hook screw (um, I know thats not what its called) I attached it first a bit futher to the left but it didnt work so had to move it. I drilled a hole with bit smaller than the screw going in the hole and then used a paint can opener in the ring to turn it once it got too hard to hand turn. You can see this at the top of the door, I think that is for opening paint cans though I end up using a butter knife most of the time!

Nathalie used a rope hanging from a tree branch and used a knot daddy taught her (a knot I havent been taught or I was singing, or looking at the ceiling while he was instructing... I find this to have happened often!) to a stick and now they have a swing. She asked tad to saw off the ends and added a please, twice.

Tad swinging her, he is more than likely going to fix it for her with only a reminding or 2 from her. Okay fine nagging. Its his own fault, he lets her be that way!

Lastly, this is a 2 part door. Top part no longer locks but when it wasnt broken, kids cant reach it. Then the lower door opens by reaching inside and its locked by a hook similar to these I have put on. Since the kids cant get it, I made an outside lock on both top and bottom that they can reach. Once inside, they can close themselves in using the inside hook they cant reach from the outside. Now this will only fail if one child goes in, locks in and runs off the other direction and now child 2 is stuck! Or can yell, or can climb fence on other side. This will prevent the door from being left open, or from child holding it shut while another runs for me. I know 2 acres isnt a long walk, but 19 times a day gets long!

This is the front room of this barn. The 2 locks on the door top and bottom lead into this room, and the room you see straight ahead had the broken lock now fixed. This room also houses 2 bales of brom hay, a type of hay good for goats. Ours eat it pretty well though they prefer alfalfa (much more expensive and they dont need exclusivly). Nona and Pepsi used to break in here but I put 2 pcs plyboard over the injured barn wall so they no longer can. With the new locks, they are really out of luck!

This long table was covered in junk left by previous owners. I sorted it from usable to trash and stacked the usable (hooks, nails, many small useful metal and plastic bits) onto small shelves and cleaned the table top. This is where I will clean and make bottles before hanging them.

So there is our day! We did school, chatted with daddy, washed dishes, hung laundry, made some phonecalls, tad pulled a tooth and then we did all this barn work and had quite a good time doing it! I am so glad to have my helpful children and the wagon my grandad made. Works great to haul drills, nails, hammer, bottles filled, cleaner, water bucket etc.

Oh, and while my work and knowledge may be primitive, I am grateful to my husband for always teaching the 3 of us how to do things so I am not helpless!