New Barn

New Barn!!!
(December 2003)

Three winters was enough to get tired of enjoying the wonders of ankle-deep slop and after last winter I complained enough to warrant the purchase of a barn to house the pones.

In December 2002, local contractor Chris Lafaille came and cut us a pad and we ordered our barn kit. Come February we went down to Galt, south of Sacramento, to pick up our freshly welded kit, brought it home, stacked up the materials on the newly cut pad, and ignored them for the rest of the summer... after all, it was sunny and we needed to go out to play, right?

Come September, I started to get nervous... the rains would soon be coming and I'd be back to the same ol' slop struggle. Unfortunately at that time, the ground was rock hard, so any attempts to dig the foundation holes were foiled. Then it started to rain...and then it was too wet to dig any foundation holes...then it stopped raining...quickly we dug six holes...it rained again...the six holes filled with water and sediment. And so it went.

Finally, this Thanksgiving, we had an all out blitz on it and got it in good enough shape that we could actually put pones in it on 6th December. yay! It still has a bunch of tweaking to go (gutters, doors, fencing, solid walls and shutters, minor roof repairs, drilling, hole filling, terra-forming, etc), but the pones are standing in the dry looking out at the slop.

Cutting the pad
Time lapse of development
What I see when I step out of my back door
Construction activities
Signing the barn
Newly inserted, dry warm pones

Cutting the pad, December 2002
What we naively thought of as "flat ground"... kinda sorta...

At various stages of development... Series of pictures starting December 2002 and ending December 2003

What I see when I step out of my back door:

Construction activities:
Stacking the trusses on the bank. Once the materials were stored on this bank, Provo would delight in getting loose and running down the bank through the stuff, miraculously avoiding stepping in a truss or purloin, or bending the roof panels, or slicing his legs off.	The not terribly brilliant flatbed trailer we rented to fetch the materials. It had so little suspension that we had to make two trips.	Putting up the trusses - this part actually went surprisingly smoothly, considering the weight of them, and the fact that the four posts on the right are free-standing and weren't yet concreted into their holes.
After only managing to dig six holes in about six months, we finally rented a petrol post-hole digger to finish the job off. We'd given up digging in the summer, as the ground was like concrete. Despite having some rain, this particular hole - even with the petrol-powered machine - still took us over an hour to dig. The ground was hard!	Putting up the roof purloins.	I tried to get a good shot showing how steep the new bank is, but it never looks the way it does when you're standing on it.
Patrick playing on the monkey-bars	Trusses and purloins in place.	Having put the entire west side of the metal roof panels on by himself in one day, we finished the second half together the next. Patrick said having a helper was more gooder.
Screwing the metal sheets to the cross-beams		Putting on the ridgeline.
	Barn is in place, footings are dug and concreted, roof is screwed to the framework - and there's the truck full of hay, ready to make a hay area.	The rather fine roof overhang to keep the weather off the delicate dry pones

Signing the barn
Patrick	Chili	Lucy

December 6th, newly inserted, dry warm pones:
What I'm going to see from now on when I go down to feed	Three stalls, three pones	Mouse does her Baby Jesus impersonation. If nothing else, I know that she really appreciates a dry, warm spot to nap in
Poor Zini was hoping to get munchies, while instead I flashed her in the eyes. Boy, was she startled and leapt backwards and then went and stood in the back of the stall pouting.	Mouse and Provo now think that they will be fed every time I come into the barn and go up the "food end". They might be right if they keep up the puppy-eyes.	Provo doing his noble-beast impersonation, complete with tied-mark. This is the first time in a month he's had his blanket off
This is what I call Provo's "black-button eye" look	Pones enjoying the fine overhang
	After telling my friend Dana that I'd got the hay area tarped and there was now fluffy hay stacked in there, she commented: "The only thing that compares with the feeling of seeing your hay all stacked nicely in the barn is a Christmas tree surrounded by presents. Actually, the hay in the barn is even nicer :-)"