A barn! A barn! We have a barn!!

I am really pleased and excited to say that finally, after more than a year of needing one, we finally have a barn for Lucky Nickel, Tucker, and Twilight.

I am so relieved that this winter they will have a proper structure to shelter in, rather than my little hoop house made of a cattle panel and a tarp!  The guys who built the chicken coop for me were able to put this up over 3 days.  Now we are just waiting for the roof panels to come in, which should be in the next few days.

The barn is made from rough-cut lumber, which is ideal for an outdoor building and is very sturdy.  It is 10 feet square and has two very sturdy doors which lead to each compartment.


One side is for Lucky Nickel, who insists on bashing everything with her horns and generally intimidating the sheep. The other side is for Tucker and Twilight, who are calm and peaceful and just want to be left alone to eat their hay in peace.

The barn has two lovely windows (on the sheep side) which are 3 by 3 feet, and 4 by 3 feet.  They open and have screens, which makes for great ventilation.


Because they were low enough for Lucky Nickel to reach when she is on her hind legs, the builders put a cattle panel piece over the outside of them, and some boards on the inside, so she cannot break the glass with her horns.  It is very difficult to find cattle panels around here, so I am glad I had one for this purpose.  The other one will probably become part of my garden set up.


Each compartment has a hay feeder area that was also made with cattle panel pieces.

One for the sheep...

...and one for her highness.

Nickel's is smaller than the one for the sheep, because she is a little portly and there is only one of her, whereas there are two sheep and they need to put some weight on.  Now, they will be able to eat without Nickel constantly charging at them and chasing them around. Do not let this innocent face fool you - she can be a bully!

I have enclosed the critters in the barn tonight as a test to see if Nickel will try to jump over the centre wall.  I hope she won't.  If she does, some additional boards will need to go up.  For now, the sheep are eating peacefully...although somebody is trying to see if the hay is greener on the other side of the wall.

 What if they have better hay than mine?

In her younger days, she would have been up on that middle wall like a shot, and over onto the other side.  These days, she's not quite so agile.  She is 7, after all!

Munch munch munch.

I went outside and looked back through the window.  I can see she's thinking about whether she can make the leap.

Everybody's in their place for the night!  And I will sleep much better this winter knowing that they are safe and cozy every time we have a big snowstorm.

My next objective will be some decorating.  I haven't decided if I will do name boards on the doors, or a 'barn quilt' decoration for each door, or what.  It will be fun to get creative with it.  I'll update when the roof goes on.

Friday's Hunt v 2.19

It's that time again - where did the week go?  I am still busy with work.  I have many things I want to blog about, but don't seem to find the time to get the posts written.  I really hope things calm down a bit soon.  I'm still doing my best to keep up with Friday's Hunt, and this week I'm actually going to post on Friday!  Our prompts from Eden Hills are:  Starts with S, Week's Favourite, and Amazing.

Starts with S
S is for spinning, and anyone who has read my blog for any length of time probably knows that I'm a spinner.  When I went to the Maritime Spinners' Retreat a couple of weekends ago, I did some spinning, and then I finished a little bit more when I got home.  Here's some yarn that I have spun over the past couple of weeks.

The purple blend is something that I made at the retreat using the fibre they gave us to play with - not my usual colours, but it's what I was given!  The green mix is some Coopworth roving that I had hanging around in my stash.

This multi-coloured yarn is some 50% merino - 50% tencel blend that I spun fairly fine, and then chain-plied to maintain the colour sections.  I really love the way it turned out and I'm very pleased with the overall yarn.  It has a nice shimmer to it and a lovely drape.  Not sure what I'll use it for yet.

This is a soft grey alpaca blended with a mixed batt that had alpaca, bamboo and wool.  The turquoise is the bamboo.  I spun one ply with just the grey alpaca, and the other with the batt.  The batt was spun at the retreat, but I did the solid grey when I got home, and plied them together.

Week's Favourite
My favourite picture this week is this blue jay.  I like the way he's tilting his head, sort of like a dog who has heard a funny noise.  I believe he's doing that to actually take a better look at the ground. He's under the seed feeder, picking up sunflower seeds dropped by the chickadees.

He certainly had some success with seed hunting that day!

Amazing
Sometimes, the word "amazing" is thrown around in a rather haphazard manner.  People say that things are "amazing" when, in reality, they're good, or even great, but perhaps not quite amazing.  I looked up the dictionary definition of amazing, which says that it is "causing great surprise or wonder" and "startlingly impressive."  I'm going to tell you about something that certainly falls into the startlingly impressive category.  Even though I'm biased, I have to say, my parents are AMAZING!

When I think about all the times over the years that they have helped me, in a myriad of ways, it's really remarkable.  I know, it's a parent's "job" to help their child, but their help goes so far beyond the requirement, it's not even on the chart any more.  So let me tell you about a few weekends ago when my amazing parents helped me out yet again.

I have had a lot of work contracts lately, and since I work for myself, I just have to take the work as it comes.  Before the busy time, I had purchased about 300 spring bulbs for planting, thinking that I'd have plenty of time on the weekends in the fall to get them in the ground.  As is often the case, the best laid plans of mice and men (and women!) don't always work out the way we expect.  I had very little time to get the bulbs planted. In the meantime, I also had the terrible experience of having the nuthatch die by hitting my window.  I had purchased some special tape for installing on the windows to help prevent bird collisions but...no time to install it.

Parents to the rescue!  They knew I was in a bind, so they came to visit for a couple of days to lend whatever help they could.  My mom and I spent a morning and afternoon weeding all my garden beds and planting all those many bulbs - assorted daffodils, alliums, English bluebells, Chionodoxa, many kinds of tulips, Siberian iris, and more.  I know you can't see the bulbs, but they're in the ground, and they'll be glorious in the spring!

As if that wasn't enough, my mom and I then processed about 60 lb of apples (I'd bought huge bags of apples, thinking I'd have time to process them...oops!).  We peeled and chopped for hours, and I put some into the food dehydrator for dried apple rings, and others went into a fresh apple crumble for our dessert, while the majority went into freezer bags.

Meanwhile, my amazing Dad installed the anti-bird-collision tape on all the windows of significant concern, which required washing all those windows first, and then using a little plastic scraping device to properly adhere each of the little squares to the window by rubbing it into place.  The squares are evenly spaced on a tape-based product.  This bird-saving product is endorsed by FLAP and I have not had a single bird collision since it has been installed.  Before it was up, I regularly had collisions from "gentle" to severe.  I am really impressed with the product, but I am even more impressed with my Dad, who just got straight to work and helped me, and the birds, in a time of need.

Although the squares are white on the outside, they are not as obvious from the inside, and the mild effect on the view outside is certainly worth the trouble!

That's not all he did!  He also did some work on that tree that fell in our woods a few weeks ago.  He cut off all the branches so the log would lay on the ground and begin its decomposition process more quickly.

Then he cut the top end of the fallen tree into four sections, all of which will be easy to move.

And even that's not all.  My mom prepared a slow-cooker turkey dish ahead of time, which she brought with her, so we didn't have to worry about making supper while we were doing these tasks. To top it off, it was actually her birthday as well, and we were able to celebrate despite our hard work. I definitely owe her a cake!

So when I tell you that my parents are amazing, I do mean it, in every sense of the word.  I am a very lucky daughter, and a very grateful one too!