We're havin' a Barn Raisin'

Part of our arrangement with the owner of the farm area is that twice a year we would put in a work day.  He has some tasks he needs completed so we would handle those as well as anything else we see that needs to be done to maintain the place.  Our work day was this past Saturday and there were lots of helping hands.  The only task the owner had for us was to paint this little out building.  This is the place we originally milked the goats but we've moved them over to the bigger barn.  We currently have 2 billy goats here, we need to keep them separate from the nanny goats or they ruin the taste of the milk.  Needless to say, with this many willing hands, the painting went quite quickly,  I think much more than the building got painted though.  Many of the kids came home with speckled faces from paint rollers, others were almost covered from head to toe in paint.  The ground got a coat, so did the wire fence, the tin roof, the goats, and 2 or 3 roosters.  The kids seemed to be smiling but I think the painting fore(wo)man was nearly pulling her hair out in frustration with some of the kids.  But she exercised patience and let them have their fun.

Some of the other things we did was to muck out the barns.  What a nasty job this is.  I've done this quite a few times in my life and it is never fun, the only thing I'm grateful for is that it wasn't pigs.  Out of pigs, cows, horses, chickens, and goats, pigs are by far the worst.  Even at the best of times, it is still a  horrible job.  There was one corner that we must have dug down 2 feet to hit the bottom.  There were two digging and two running the wheel barrows.  I knew those diggers had some stories, but they way they were slinging that morning was something to be seen!

There was some general maintenance work done as well.  In replacing some boards we came across a bunch of old nails.  The handmade kind where each nail is its own unique masterpiece, different from all the rest.  I am so grateful for standardization and the assembly line, it makes everyone's life that much better.  Those old nails do give a bit of a timeline for how old this barn is though.  I'm not sure when hand-made nails went out of fashion, but it was definitely after this barn was built.

All in all it was a good few hours of work.  Some much needed mucking was done, painting, and general repairs to make life easier for all.  If that darn baseball and soccer season hadn't gotten in the way, we could have gotten more done, but we did get all the necessary stuff, and some extra, completed.

If anyone needs some compost or fertilizer, thanks to the Sharp and Allsup minions, we have a great big pile ripe for the taking.