Barn Renovations

Today, I helped David take down some hay feeders in our barn.  This really doesn't seem like a huge deal, but to me it was.  I built those hay feeders by myself back in 2008.  It was a full day's work figuring out how I wanted them to look, and making it happen.  There was some nostalgia involved in remembering how they were put together and how to best take them down.  Remembering how our first goats squeezed through the slats and danced around in them and got themselves locked in the feed/milk room.  Remembering all the changes we made to them to keep chickens out of them...  I'm not sad that they'll be gone--it is the best thing. 

We also took down the partitions for kidding pens that David built in 2009.  It was a lot of work, now that some of the fencing has been buried under pea gravel and bits of composted bedding material. 

There will be kidding pens and hay feeders again, but we will be installing heated, automatic waterers in the barn, and then concrete floors.  There is much work to be done!

I have plans for how the new hay feeders will look.  Their design will be slightly more wasteful but more efficient in terms of how many times the hay has to be handled pre-feeding, and also at keeping the chickens out of it.  I am not so certain what the new kidding pens will be like.  We have time.  I hope we get to re-use the gates that David made for them, even if they get used for something else.

While we are waiting on a back hoe to dig the trenches for the water and electric lines, there is much that can be done.  2x4s that were used to hang feed troughs can be taken down and recycled.  The hay feeders can come apart.  Floor decking boards and joists in the milk/feed room need to come up in preparation for concrete, and they will get reused.  The wall between the milk room and doe pen will get reworked.  I anticipate that my carpal tunnel will rear its ugly head because much of this work will take place with a cordless drill.  Let it come. 

Water chores could easily have taken us 2 hours a day (one in the morning, one in the evening) before with all the emptying, cleaning, and refilling of buckets.  Goat escapes when we brought them through the fences.  In the winter, there was breaking of ice, carting buckets in the house to fill with hot water, and sometimes the goats came in with us!  Sometimes the goats would try to eat the fake greenery on my fireplace mantel while I filled their buckets.  While I have fond memories of all the crazy antics, I don't want that to be a part of my day again.  At least, not every day.  :)