Hello out there! Bet you thought I had dropped off the face of the earth or the farm had submerged like Atlantis? Still here and paddling like a madwoman to keep ahead of the "must-do" list.
I will bring the blog up to date in sections starting with the great transformation! My DH George wirebrushed all the ancient flaking paint off the original barn and painted it to match the new sheep barn. It looked so good the man went wild and painted the compost building and the ram barn.
In between these endeavors he built the "Palazzo de Poulet" and painted it too! The chicken house is a marvel of clever design and architectural genious. Its a darn nice chicken house too! The girls moved in without a squawk and settled down to some serious egg laying.
We also finished the compost building which took much longer than expected. (Doesn't Everything?) The composter has greatly improved the management of the barn cleaning and it works beautifully. We will most likely have to add some water to our next turning of the heap and with that we should have finished compost in 3 months from start to finish. If it takes longer no problem since we can't get out on the field anyway and there is lots of room to start the next batches. The girls are also really appreciating the dry rocked in 'sacrifice' are we built for them. During the wettest part of the winter rains they have a dry place to hang out without getting their tootsies muddy!
So that was what we were up to just before the rains arrived. Then along came breeding season and even that was an adventure with with sheep and goats and GOTLANDS! Yup, we have some Gottie babies perking away right now. They are due around the 21st of March to four of our lovely ladies. More on that in the next post though!
Stay tuned for the next installment of Blog Catch UP from Sheepmom at Shady Oaks!