A Clean Barn is a Happy Barn

I took a couple of vacation days last week -- Friday and Monday -- so that I would have a long weekend. We were supposed to go to the Northwoods to help my brother, who just had back surgery, get his wood chopped and stacked for the winter. His wood delivery guy broke his foot, so there was no delivery. Here I was with four days off work!! First time I have had time off without being sick in a long time!! We decided to put it to good use.

We ordered our hay for the winter (150 bales to join the 100 or so we already have on hand) and figured this was as good a time as any for the annual barn cleaning. Here is John, blowing the dust off the rafters. As you can see, there is a mini-dust storm going on in our barn. It is going to be interesting to see if the barn stays a bit cleaner since we changed the stall floors from dirt/straw to crushed limestone/mats/pellets. It was a big job, but when we got finished that barn just sparkled!! Well worth the effort! I think the animals appreciated it, though it was difficult to tell. The goats just kept staring at me......

We got the hay delivery early one morning following a night out with friends....needless to say, it was a painful day of hoisting up and stacking bales. Our pasture area is a mud pit from all the recent rain, and the heavy tractor and trailer were sliding around a bit when our hay guy delivered. As a result, our outside hay feeder was a casualty -- the trailer slid into it when he was backing up, and just snapped those 4x4 poles like they were toothpicks. No big loss -- we have known for a long time that the feeder was in the wrong spot and needed to be moved. Misho could not resist climbing all the way to the top of the stack.

We took a couple of breaks during the job, and we got thru it. Feels good to be set for the winter. The animals had an "all you can eat buffet" while we were working on the stack. Even the chickens got into it. At one point every animal we have was somewhere on or around the hay trailer. Most impressive was Sonja, the princess kitty who is usually laying on a pillow someplace, exerted enough energy to climb on the haystack.

So that is two big winter jobs out of the way.

Two down, and who knows how many more to go!