Fall Chores

One of the first fall chores is to locate and bring something like this big boy to the farm.






The expression on the faces of the girls says it all.

The plan this year is to leave the goats at the farm for most of the winter. I had some metal panels that I had recovered from a house. Along with a few cedar posts and some 2x4s we have the beginnings of a nice shelter.

I had enough shorter metal panel pieces to add two side walls. I extended the roof over the fence for hay storage, the hay doubles as a good wind break and makes a cozy three sided enclosure.

 These pictures taken in November, show that the plan worked quite well.

 I have been trying to decide what to do with this 100 plus year old structure.  As a builder, I just can't tear it down. A winter of heavy snow and I may not need to make the decision.  I decided that a good fall project would be to dig out the approx. 2 feet of debris from the inside and begin to rebuild the roof.

I used rough sawn material and matched the existing construction practices. It needs a lot more work but at least now the roof won't completely collapse.  The other side of the metal roof is completely brown with rust. On this new side I tried an experiment. I used phosphoric acid to remove some of the galvanizing to chemically age the corrugated metal panels. It took off the shine and it is starting to rust already.

This portion of the project completed just in time.