First project of 2010 underway

Braveheart forced our hand. After wrecking my car on the last day of 2009, we aren't inclined to spend ANY money, knowing that a big hit to our savings is just around the corner. But the only shelter we can offer Braveheart when it's pouring rain onto soggy, muddy ground is a corner pen in the fold. That worked fine when he was younger, but now that he is a 100-pound (more or less) wrecking ball mature Shetland ram, and I have two open ewe lambs adjacent who are acting like jail bait . . . well.Obviously. That does not work - nor is it fair to Braveheart to expect that it would. We've since reinforced the corner pen with an impenetrable wall of pallets; if the barn caught fire Braveheart would be roast mutton, because it would not be possible to get him out of Alcatraz quickly. Something had to be done.

My long-suffering husband, with much muttering about how much my sheep have cost him in time and effort, resigned himself to yet another project to accommodate them. Sunday morning he purchased materials and started work on a 12'x12' Ram Ramada in the northeast quadrant of our place, a fenced, wooded lot. We worked all afternoon and into the evening, and got the corner posts set and rafters up with spacers. Sure doesn't seem like much for the hours it took, but that seems to be the way things always go. It would have been nice to get the tin on the roof (old stuff we're reusing) before the rain came again, but at least the rain didn't start yesterday afternoon as forecast.
Hopefully we can get this completed before Blackberry comes home. With one mature ram, our sheep set-up was definitely not satisfactory; it is utterly insufficient for two rams. The boys (two rams plus wether Browning) will have to be contained within the shed until we can dig up all the bracken fern in that lot; then they will have room to roam.

I'm thankful to have a handy husband! (even if he grumbles :-)

That's it for now from . . .