Rocking in the mud

Last winter was the first winter here in our new home during which we had livestock. Before this, we had never "tested" the corral behind the barn on how things would hold up during winter conditions coupled with livestock use.

What we learned is the back corral gets muddy. Very very sink-down-deep muddy. We mitigated it as best we could be laying down a heavy layer of gravel, but that only went so far.

Part of the problem is the barn is built downhill from a small slope, which means water drains right to the opening of the barn doors and makes a muddy soup when it's churned up by bovine hooves.

The mud right outside the barn door was so deep, in fact, that moving a heavy wheelbarrow full of barn waste was very difficult. Immediately outside the door, the wheel of the wheelbarrow would instantly sink several inches down, plus I was pushing it uphill to boot. No fun.

To this end, we often laid down boards to bridge the worst of the mud, then take the boards back up after the barn was cleaned. The barn waste is dumped in a pile in the corral. (A couple times a year, Don uses the tractor to transport the waste to a more permanent compost pile.)

Don is in the process of correcting the drainage issue with a two-pronged approach. One, he wants to build an awning that would offer the animals a bit more shelter during adverse weather conditions. And two, he wants to trench and lay a French drain that would divert water from the slope and direct it over the hillside immediately outside the corral fence.

But, this being autumn, the weather caught up with us. After several days of unrelenting rain, the corral transitioned rapidly from damp to soupy, making it impossible to dig trenches. The skeletal infrastructure outside the barn is the support posts for the not-yet-built awning. (Note the outside water tank on the right.)

So, as a stopgap measure, we decided to lay down more rock. Thankfully we have a generous supply on hand of this vital homestead resource.

Don started by building a "road" of rock so the tractor wouldn't sink into the mud and get stuck. He did this by driving the tractor in until muddy conditions prevailed, then dumped the rock and scraped it flat. With the next load, he was able to advance another five feet and dump another load and scrape it flat. By this method, he was able to bring the machine to where he needed it to go.

The first section we tackled was a tight corner where the water tap and water tank are located. Roof runoff renders this area extremely muddy. (Yeah, the barn has no gutters. Go figure.) To the right, where the horse panels fence off the edge of the corral, is a fairly steep dropoff. I started by using a hose to siphon out and empty the water tank, which needed a good scrubbing anyway. I also wanted to level the tank, which was leaning a bit.

Unlike last year when we laid down rock, however, this time we used weed cloth to make a barrier in hopes the rock wouldn't just sink down and get enveloped by the mud.

First load of gravel.

Load by load, sheet by sheet of weed cloth, we rocked in this section.

Finally we were able to pull the rocked area to the front of the water tap, which was as far as we planned to go for this section.

We raked everything flat and leveled a pad for the water tank. Then, while Don started working on the pad in front of the barn, I scrubbed and cleaned the water tank, got it set up, and refilled it.

Much better!

The next spot to tackle was the mud pit right in front of the barn door, through which I needed to push heavy wheelbarrows full of waste up to the waste pile. Don started by scraping a path backward with the tractor bucket.

Oddly enough, he didn't have to scrape very deep before he hit the layer of gravel we laid down last fall, so that was good. Then, while he went to fetch a load of gravel, I laid down the first section of weed cloth.

Dumping the first load of rock.

This is a much finer grade of gravel, the kind that packs down. Coupled with the underlying layer of larger gravel from last year, as well as the weed cloth, we have hopes the area outside the barn door won't become a morass of soupy mud over the winter.

We only graveled to just where the awning will end, where the downhill slope levels off. In other words, we made a graveled ramp. At the end of this ramp, hopefully soon, we'll be able to trench and lay down the drain pipe so water gets diverted away from the barn.

When all the gravel was in place, we raked it flat, then linked arms and waltzed around the pad, compressing the gravel. In country parlance, this is known as a "hot date."

There are still deeply muddy spots between the ramp (left) and the water tank (right), but at least the rocked areas are dry. The cows can either stay in the barn, or farther out in the corral, to find dry spots during wet weather.

Since the tractor was in the corral already, the last thing Don did was to pile and consolidate the barn waste. Come spring, we'll move this waste onto the compost pile, while moving the older compost onto the garden beds.

We have a dry spell coming up next week, and Don hopes to finish building the awning and French drain during that interim.

Meanwhile, another autumn project is done.

Raising a roof

A neighbor is building a barn. For some time now, we've watched the progress from afar. Now it was time to lift things onto the posts.

This neighbor is a former general contractor, so he knows what he's doing. He had ratchets at the top of each upright, ready to hoist each corner of the roof-truss unit into the air.

He conscripted the assistance of three other men in the neighborhood, including Don, to turn the cranks on the ratchets. Manning the cranks took a cool head for heights – the trusses were being raised to 16 feet high, so the men were standing about 13 feet up the ladders.

Remember our older neighbor Bill? That's him on the right.

Our neighbor's wife's job and my job was to measure the progress to confirm the corners of the unit were being raised evenly. Here it's up by about two feet.

Slowly, crank by crank, the men lifted the roof trusses into the air. Every fifteen cranks or so, we women would measure to make sure the corners were at the same level.

That's Don on the right.

This is the roof-truss unit at its full height. Our neighbor will spend a few days securing the trusses in place. The second roof-truss unit is in back, and we'll help raise it in the next week or so.

Here's what the proto-barn looks like from a more distant location.

This neighbor has needed a barn since he and his wife moved in a few years ago. It's nice to see it coming to fruition ... especially if, as some reports predict, we're in for a hard winter. Now his livestock will have shelter.

Bringing in the hay

About a year and a half ago, we found a good deal on hay. We bought 4.5 tons for a decent price.

This was long before we had our cows, of course, but hay stored under cover does fine for a couple of years (meaning, it doesn't lose much of its nutritional value).

This hay fed our cows all through the winter, but we knew in advance it wouldn't be enough to get them through the lean early-spring time, so we've been keeping an eye out for another good deal.

We found it. A local farmer was selling "okay"-quality hay in 500-lb. round bales. Round bales aren't our first choice, but the price was right, so we bought three tons (12 bales).

The farmer was able to deliver them (which was nice, since we don't have the means to transport a lot of hay), and Don was able to offload the bales from the man's flatbed and place them next to the driveway for the night.

The next day, Don moved the bales. He used tines attached to front of the tractor bucket...

...to stab a bail and hoist it up.

One by one, he transported the bales up the lower driveway to the barn area.

He stacked them neatly in an area heavy with gravel (meaning, good drainage). We anchored one side with a railroad tie to keep the bales from rolling.

The other side has cinder blocks to accomplish this task.

Then, since rain was threatening, we fetched a large tarp and got it over the hay and anchored.

This hay has some discolored spots, but it's not moldy. We can discard any parts that aren't good and feed the cows with the rest.

We didn't store the hay in the barn because, at the moment, we don't have room. Not only do we still have some bales left from our first batch, but the barn was messy and disorganized after a winter of shoving things "temporarily" under cover and then leaving them there. (The totes of Christmas items were still on the floor instead of up in the loft, for example.)

For the last couple days, Don has been cleaning the barn with a vengeance, and it's looking vastly improved. He still has a lot of anonymous totes and crates that even now, four years after moving here, hasn't been sorted. He suspects most of it is junk and will get discarded, but of course he needs to go through them all to confirm.

At any rate, this hay will last us well into the warm months when the grass in our pasture will be tall enough to let the cows graze without supplementing.

In all our years of rural living, raising and baling our own hay is one thing we've never been able to do. We've never had the acreage, the equipment, or the money. We accept this limitation and know that purchasing hay is just one of the things we'll have to do each year.

Additionally, this is one of the few planned purchases we had in mind following my job loss and our subsequent financial "tightening of the belt." Under no circumstances would we ever allow our animals to suffer.

Hay today, cows tomorrow?

Summer is slipping away from us, and it doesn't look like we'll manage to get cows this fall. However that doesn't mean we're not planning for them.

Now that the barn is vastly cleared out after our humongous yard sale, we've got room to move around.

And one of the first things we did was move in some hay. That's because we happened to see a local listing for small(ish) bales (80 lbs.) in a small(ish) quantity (4.5 tons). Because the price was right and the quality was good, we snapped it up. Here it's stacked on the seller's trailer in his barn.

For a reasonable fee, the seller delivered it. Here he's backing the trailer up the lower driveway...

...watched intently by Mr. Darcy.

The seller unhitched the trailer and left it at our place so we could unload it over the span of a few days.

Unfortunately this span coincided with the days we held the yard sale, making for a very divided focus. What it meant was Don and I started unloading it in the evenings, when the heat was still sizzling and we were tired already.

The first thing Don did was mark the floor in the barn, leaving spaces to move around the bales.

We started by loading the bales onto the tines of  the tractor to transport them into the barn...

...and quickly discovered a hydraulic leak.

Right. So much for unloading and stacking the bales quickly and efficiently. With the yard sale going on and with the seller coming back for his trailer on Sunday afternoon, we had no option except to tumble, shove, and push the bales off the trailer willy-nilly. No rain was predicted, and the only thing we had to make sure was that the seller could pull his trailer out unimpeded.

After the yard sale was over, and since no rain was predicted, we were able to move the bales into the barn at leisure, working just in the cooler morning hours. We used hand trucks to cart the bales in. When the stacks got too high, Don rigged up skids so we could shove them higher. I don't know why, but 80-pound bales weigh more than they used to when we were 20 years younger.

Days went by, and either separately or together, we moved a few bales at a time into the barn, stacking them higher and higher. Temps at this point were still in the high 90s and low 100s, so we didn't kill ourselves to get everything indoors.

But finally the day came when rain did threaten, so we made a final push and just got everything under cover, mostly by leaning the bales vertically in long lines. Hey, it's temporary.

We're still stacking – quite a number of bales are still leaning in vertical lines against the main pile, blocking usable space – but we'll get it done in time. We need this load of hay to have the smallest possible footprint on the barn floor, since we are keeping an eye out to purchase another two or three tons.

No, we don't have cows ... yet. Among much else, we still have to fence the property and build the barn infrastructure (feed boxes, milking stall, calf pen) to support them. With everything else we're working on, that's why we may not get animals before winter.

But wow, is it nice to see hay in the barn again.

The last yard sale we'll ever have

For the past few weeks, Don and I have been consumed with preparing and implementing a massive yard sale.

This sale was, literally, years in the planning. Since we downsized from a 3600 sq. ft. home to a 1400 space (further reduced to 1000 sq ft after Older Daughter took over her suite) – and additionally downsized from a 20-acre homestead to eight acres – the result was a lot of stuff we no longer need or want.

This meant it got stored in the barn. The barn was in horrible shape, disorganized and stuffed with items we had earmarked for a yard sale.

Yet the yard sale kept getting postponed as more important projects took precedence.

But we needed to get the barn cleaned out for a variety of reasons, not least of which we want to build the necessary infrastructure for cows (feed boxes, calf pens, milking stall, etc.), as well as have space for hay storage.

Over the last year, we've gradually created order out of chaos. Don built his "man cave," which is not just a dedicated space to store his tools, but has the added advantage of having a sturdy loft over the top where we can store items we seldom need but don't want to get rid of (such as Christmas decorations).

We also moved a bunch of firewood left behind by the previous owners, and which had dominated one corner of the barn. Moving this wood freed up enough space to use as a landing area for consolidating potential yard sale items. As you can imagine, this space got packed with stuff, and over another year's time, it got even more packed as we gradually sorted items.

As the months went by, those stacks of unsold items became increasingly irksome. We needed the barn space. We had plans for that barn space. In short, it was time to get rid of all those unneeded things.

But – as many of you doubtless know – executing a yard sale is not easy, especially in a rural area. In addition to signage and advertising, we needed to make sure the weather was good, everything was displayed property, and everything was labeled and priced. Groan, what a task.

So we finally picked a weekend and started getting ready. We transported items out of the barn and began piling them in the side yard of the house. This was a slow process and took perhaps two weeks, working between other tasks and projects.

The piles got bigger and bigger as we brought more items out. However we didn't want to start putting things in the driveway (where the sale was being held) until (a) we were certain the weather would cooperate; and (b) we didn't want to attract too much attention in advance of the opening of the sale.

And then the weather changed. Whereas before it had been dry, suddenly we had rain expected. And not just any rain; potentially we had as much as two inches coming in one day!

We were fortunate that the items were all in the side yard. We clustered everything more tightly together and covered them with large tarps.

As it turns out, the weather entirely passed us by. We didn't get a single drop of rain. "I don't think I've ever seen a worse foul-up of a weather prediction than this one," Don remarked.

This weather uncertainty postponed the yard sale for a few more days. Last week, we made a frantic last-gasp effort and got everything out in the driveway. It took days to move, arrange, label, and price everything.

Oh, and clean everything. After two years of sitting in the barn, lots of things were dusty and dirty.

We moved heavy items, such as a number of woodstoves, with the tractor.

We had a corner for free stuff...

...including a box of magazines.

I even had a selection of canning jars I was willing to part with.

We consolidated furniture-related items into one area for a "homey" look.

We had books, records, tapes, CDs, and office supplies in the shadiest corner.

Random items were grouped in various other places.

On Thursday night, as the sun went down, Don and I finally finished pricing everything. We were exhausted. As is typical whenever we did a craft show (we've done dozens), we fretted and anticipated the worst. What if no one showed up? We had contingency plans just in case.

The last thing we did, of course, was put up signage. We made sure it was bright in color, easy to read, and backed with plywood to keep its shape.

But of course, just because we were holding a yard sale didn't mean our other obligations stopped. For example, I work an online job Thursday through Saturday. So on Friday, while I was both minding the yard sale and working, I set up my computer under the woodpile awning, which became my home away from home for two days.

Interestingly, this lady landed on my computer speaker (since I was playing my usual Baroque selection) and just grooved for perhaps an hour or so. No doubt she felt the vibrations of the music. Who knew wasps were classical music fans?

More predictably, I watched a number of spiders living in the wood, catching meals.

Friday morning dawned, and we held our breath. Would anyone show up? Was the signage effective?

We shouldn't have worried. Friday was steady and productive, with customers arriving at an easy pace and eager to see what we had available.

Throughout the day, of course, we became a captive audience for those who felt compelled to share the story of their Great Aunt Martha's gall bladder operation.

And yet for every anecdote about gall bladders, we had the chance to meet lots of local people who were fascinating and pleasant, and came away with a stack of connections for everything from a possible Jersey heifer for sale to a shared interest in Renaissance Faires. We were also gratified to hear several compliments about our signage.

As was expected, sales were less brisk on Saturday and Sunday, but still nothing to sneeze at.

So here it is, Monday morning. The yard sale – at last! – is finally over. Don now has the time to concentrate on other projects. My task this week will be to divide the remaining unsold items into several piles: Things we will sell separately through the local Facebook Marketplace; items to donate to a local charity thrift store; pieces we'll give to friends and neighbors; and stuff we'll just throw away. A very few items we'll keep, in the spirit of "If it sells, great; if it doesn't sell, we'll use it for such-and-such."

At any rate, a large section of the barn is now cleaned out. That was the whole purpose.

This will be the last yard sale we'll ever have. In fact, a neighbor asked if she could purchase our signage for when she holds a yard sale of her own. Purchase the signage? Heck no! Just take it. It's yours. We'll never need it again.