Barn Floor 2/4ths done.

2/4 finished floor.

I managed to finish the center section of the barn floor yesterday morning.  It only took about four hours.  I have 64 sq feet of tongue and groove flooring left.  It was just enough to do the job.  I still have the end section, buried in old flooring and sheep feeders, and the left side - future home of the jugs (sheep creches).  I think the floor is on hold for a while now.  I need to get the other side of the hay storage cleaned out and outside doors installed.  Once that is done the front of the barn needs to be emptied so there is room to work on the roof.  The only problem with the roof is the material for it is still installed in the other two buildings that need to be torn down.  My help starts work on Thursday.  We are going to get the second hay area up to speed, then empty the front of the barn.

I still have 20 hens.  I may lose another one, but I think she may be egg bound and there is nothing you can do for that.  She will get better or die in the next week.  On a plus side, the chicken door guy got back to me and he is going to fix the automatic chicken door!  I removed the door yesterday and packaged it.  I am going to send him my two broken Chicken Butler doors also, three large packages ready to be mailed in the pickup.  I will drop them off today.  He had some ideas for a stronger door.  This makes me very happy.  Having to remember to go out every night and lock up the chickens is a losing proposition.  Eventually, you will forget and the predators never forget. I need to get some more baby chickens to make up the difference.  A dozen would do the job, unfortunately, I need to clean out the coop first.  A solid day of shoveling and cleaning.  The days just keep adding up.

I have removed an entire pickup load of scrap wood from inside the house. I had left overs from the stair project.  I finished the stairs 1-2 years ago.  The biggest loss is Annmarie is never again going to allow me to install the compound miter saw on the breeze porch so I can cut wood inside the house.  I have forever lost ground!  Now the closest I can get is the old house porch and if she has her way I will be inside the old house away from sight.  Cannot do that until I get some power inside the old house.  Before I can really do that I need to add some flooring in the attic so there is room to remove the rest of the boxes out of the old house. I have the most of the stuff for the attic already purchased.  It just needs to be cut and installed.

There are no tools left inside the house now either.  It took me five trips using boxes and five gallon buckets to take all the tools out.  Thus necessitating a good cleaning and organizing day in the old house/shop.  It is getting hard to walk around in there.  The back door window broke in a windstorm over the winter.  I need to do something with this also, the window broke because the door is falling apart.  That is caused by the building not being level.  It just has to wait, the barn is the first priority.   I can see that the old house is going to be a next year project.  Even if I only give it about six weeks, I could get it leveled and skirted appropriately.  Once that is done, I can start working on wiring it for the wood shop equipment (220V).

Sarah leading the horses out of the yard.  They still eat my bushes and leave bigger doughnut piles.

I posted an add on Craigslist for the lambs on Friday, so far the only bite I got was some guy claiming to be in the military who wanted to pay me via Paypal.   We were okay with that and already have an account, so I sent him the contact information.  He had said someone else would come pick the animals up.  His return email gave me the song and dance about wiring the money to his contact after I received payment via Paypal, total scam.  I told him to hit the road and not bother contacting me again.  Surprisingly, he did.