Projects

These are some of the projects we completed while Frank was home. Not this first picture, this one is of Vladi asking me to let him out with that plaintive, hopeful look. Which is hard really because I love him so so much! I went in to visit him instead, and he chewed my pants, my shirt, my hair, my hat, my hands. Guess they teethe?

So this is the fence we had put up for the boys. It isnt easy to dig fence holes here without an auger, and we dont have one. Also Frank wasnt home, also the price for the fence posts, panels etc wasnt much less than what the man charged us. So rather than me rigging a home until Frank gets home in oct, bc I cant do this fencing job alone, we paid someone. We, however, built the lean too. It is missing its windbreaks which I now have cut and need to put up, the are about 2/3 the width of the front of each half so that there is a nice sized door way, but the goats can go inside behind the windbreak. We may eventually put in doors depending on the size of goats we have back here, bc smaller babies are more defenseless and need to be put up into the barn at night.

This picture is just to show the middle panel, its a 32x32 ft enclosure, but the lean too is just 1 building split by the fence panel in the middle. This is for breeding. We can put 1 buck and 1 + does in one side and know who was bred by whom! We will also rotate pasture this way for the boys when they are not breeding. Scout is in the other half right now bc we have 4 new goats. We have the goat yard fenced in, and it has 2 barns with yards fenced in with gates within it and the new goats are in one barn/yard and the other belongs to Nona and Pepsi and Scout is too small to be with them at night. I cant put her with the 3 new babies though that is the plan eventually, I want to have them separate and wormed!

Picture farther back, we have nice prairie grass out here. The babies are fat from eating it! Nona and Pepsi spend a large part of their day eating this too. This is the back field, fenced separate of the goat yard but bordering it. N and P can be out there for only a few more mo, once the bucks go into rut their odor will spoil the milk before you milk the goat! So this new fence is more than 75 ft away from the goat yard fence, we can very effectively keep them separate.

This WAS my greenhouse. I have a secret plan for some of the aluminum but I will not tell you and I wouldnt tell my husband because it may fail... I hate for it all to go to waste! Our ins would cover it but the deductible is higher than it cost. So this next fall we will have a big greenhouse put in, we are putting it in. Paying someone to dig a 3 ft deep rectangular hole then we will build a hoophouse over that.


Our new chickens in our temporary coop, these are hand raised chickens from the local "goat lady." Her name is Karen and she has goats, chickens and mini horses. My kids LOVE her property and animals, Nathalie is so enthralled with miniature horses. They both love horse and are very comfortable and confident with full sized ones, but Nathalie has always loved things that are her size. Karen hand raises chickens, so they come to you to be picked up and loved! They are easy to catch and carry, I wouldnt buy chickens from anyone but her. Her chickens are even better tempered, roosters are I mean, than other roosters I have seen. We bought 2 types of chickens from her and I will build them a big coop this wk, we cant do free range bc they get eaten...

Remember my fencing job this winter? It was cold and I didnt want to cut the cattle panel, they are expensive, and I didnt cut the chicken wire either bc I didnt want to waste. I knew I would just roll it back up when the babies could no longer pass through the holes in the cattle panel. Frank fixed this with the cattle panel, we pulled out the RR tie that had prevented me from completing the task well with my rigged fencing... I wasnt able to lift it. There is now a pc of cattle panel put in at the right to keep goats from passing through that side. When frank is home, we will redo this gate because right now it leans and doesnt open as easily as we would like but for now at least I can use it again!

This is my new barn door! The big barn, which really needs to come down and be replaced, has a room in the front where my hay is right now. There was a 10x6 sliding door to put the hay in. But it was rotted and falling apart, and off track. I had used pieces of 2x4 and plyboard to mend the holes in the door and to screw it to the barn and keep it from being blown off completely. We tore out that door and built this one on Franks very good plans.

The door handle, he actually suggested that we didnt NEED a door handle. Who wants a door with no handle? He used 2 hasps at the bottom inside that are easy to open, they are to keep the bottom from being caught and blowing outward. The other one had big wheels on it but this is honestly easier to open so I prefer it.

It has a track on the top, and so the hardware just slides in. This was my first experience building a door, and we had a great time. We used my new compressor, yes its mine, and the drill. Um, I think thats mine too. Because I wanted it and its nice. It is named Verde bc its green, and my new compressor being red and small is still being decided. I have 2 names, Senor Rojo, or suggested by Amanda, Poquito Rojo bc it is small. We are learning spanish this yr, can you tell? And yes, I do name all of my tools. I named my un-purchased tractor. So it surely surprises no one that my drill has a name!

Finished door, it looks nice! The kids need to paint it still, we are doing white with red accents. Franks choice. It matches the barn, though I could care less about decorating which everyone knows... At any rate, the paint will make the door last longer. We will take it down and save it along with the good sheet metal and many other use able pieces when we tear down this barn and rebuild next yr.

So thats it, a bit of what we did. There are more things, more pictures, more stories. I am still behind on blogging and pictures of my new goats still to come.