Monday, January 04, 2010

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 . . .

9 comments:

An English Shepherd said...

Looks like its coming along nicely :-)

Wizz

MiniKat said...

They grumble, but they love us! ;-)

Michelle said...

EXACTLY, Kat! (I'm glad you understand. :-)

thecrazysheeplady said...

We've got good husbands :-). That will be a nice shed!

Theresa said...

Love the 100 lb wrecking ball comment! Hmmm . . . if we could only get them to do that on command, we could probably rent them out for demolition duty!

Theresa G

Shula said...

It looks good so far. Isn't it interesting how much damage a 100lb animal can do? Thank goodness my horse at 1000lbs isn't that destructive lol. Sorry to hear about your car, not the best start to a new year.

Anonymous said...

Love the wrecking ball comment! I read your explanation of how your hubby handled sheep duty. My TH (trophy husband) just kept nodding his head and muttering "yyyeesss..."
I don't know what we would do without our sweet husbands?

Theresa said...

LOL, yes they grumble and I suspect exchange techniques. It too is an art. ;-) But they do it and we are truly appreciative. As I point out, he gets the satisfaction of a job done and completed, the stuff I get to do never really gets done...
I forgot to mention the last time I commented, I'm so sorry about your accident

Leigh said...

A handy husband is indeed a blessing! Maybe the grumbling comes in part because projects seem to take so much longer to complete than they ought to! (That's usually the source of grumbling at our house.)