Mon, May 25, 2009 
Filed under Animals, Indoors, Planning, Spring, Tools
The White Rocks have arrived. Yes, 40 more White Rock Cornish X males, here for the fattening and then away for the slaughter. We got two-week-olds for the same reason as last year: save time and care with so many things going on! Their new chickenhouse isn’t quite ready, so I set up temporary quarters in the barn, 2×10′s surrounding a 4×8 sheet of plywood. A brand new feeder and waterer, some fresh wood shavings, and they’re let loose to do what they do best: EAT! (But there are PLANS to get them properly outside this time, eating bugs and romping in the dirt…)
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Fri, Mar 06, 2009 · Filed under Building & Fixing, Fieldwork, Planning, Tools, Winter
Ahhh, yes, THIS is what warm weather feels like! For the first time this year, the temperature topped 60°F (15°C), with a hazy sun and a gentle breeze. We’ve had some melt-off days already, but this one tastes like spring! Usually, there’s a day like this sometime in February, so it’s been a long time coming, and makes me wonder how even crazier the rest of the weather will be. No worries…today feels great.
The photo is a good to-do list for when real spring comes and the ground is dry enough to work and get around on. There’s a jumble of spare lumber taken from the barn when we cleared an area for the new seedling room—it needs to be sorted and stacked, and some of it will be the new chickenhouse! (Only patches of snow are left on much of the land, but I’m sure it’ll be back before it’s really gone.) The abundantly overgrown grasses that partially surround the barn and border the moldboarded garden areas is a big clean-up job. And, up the slope, the Kubota compact tractor calmly waits for after the hired-big-tractor disking and the compost spreading, when we do the final tilling of the garden beds. Coming soon. Cool!
Tags:
barn,
chickenhouse,
clean-up,
grass,
lumber,
melt-off,
snow,
timing,
tractor,
waiting,
weather Possibly similar posts:
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Sat, Jan 10, 2009 · Filed under Building & Fixing, Winter
A fairly productive Saturday of building out the new seedling room in the freezing cold (-15°C/5°F), with Michael and Bob (he dropped by to help for the day). By sundown, we had about half of the framing done, slow going with the cold, and the joists in the ceiling to work around. The propane space heater I used to use for emergency greenhouse heat barely made a difference with all of the drafts around the old barn doors and windows. This winter work is nowhere near as fun as rough carpentry in warm weather, but it felt good to get stuff done. And we’re still on schedule—seedlings soon have to start!
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Sat, Jan 03, 2009 · Filed under Building & Fixing, People, Winter
Momentum is slowly building at the new farm. The trusty Kubota compact tractor is on site, there to help out wherever it can. Today, we just about finished the demolition in the barn, which included a small room on the upper level (pounded together with a million 3″ nails), and a stall area in the lower level that looked good maybe for goats. Below, Michael uses a sawzall (reciprocating saw) to cut things up. The sawzall is my favorite power tool of the moment. With a heavy duty demo blade, it sails through wood and nails no problem (you can see the stall poles sawed just above where they’re set in concrete). Sometimes, you have to tear down in order to build—with the right tools, that can be fun. We’re moving along—the new seedling room is on its way!
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Sun, Dec 28, 2008 · Filed under Building & Fixing, Off-the-farm, Winter
Made it back to the new farm to start demo for the new seedling room. I don’t get to do much bigger construction work, and this is really just interior framing and insulating, nothing complicated or structural, but it’s a fair-sized project, involving new windows and doors, what I’d still call big rough carpentry fun! The barn is a small one, 24′x30′ (7.3x9m), about 20-30 years old. The structure is simple, basic, easy-to-understand—what you see is what it looks like. The beam in the pic is one of a dozen or so that support the upper floor. What could be clearer! We’re turning half of the lower level, with its poured concrete floor and concrete block walls, into a fully winterized space that’ll hopefully be home to new herb seedlings by the end of January!
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Wed, Dec 17, 2008 · Filed under Animals, Autumn, Fieldwork
A rear-end view of the cows leaving the barn has become a familiar every-morning sight. For the last few weeks, since the weather took a turn for the freezing, I’ve been walking through the dim lower barn, toting buckets of warm water and feed, on the way to the chickenhouse. In nice weather, it’s easier and more pleasant to walk outside through the barnyard. This route has the advantage of no wind and no icy patches. It’s a bit of a winding road: into the minimally heated well pump room (heated so the pipes don’t freeze) where the 40kg (88lb) sacks of feed are stored, out the inner door into the dark and chilly lower barn, head down past the empty milking stalls (from dairy farm days), straight towards the window into the loafing barn where the cows come in at night, hard left, down another stretch between pens, unlatch a side door, head outside for a short walk, and it’s in with the chickens… A new daily routine for my first winter with the birds.
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