New mangers; phase one

Sissy and I are no carpenters. Personally I can barely drive a nail. Lucky for us, we have a good friend who IS a carpenter. Sissy finagled JR into volunteering to help. He is truly and awesome friend. Had it been just Sissy and me, we might have managed to install one or two uprights – probably the wrong way. With JR making it look easy, the whole front wall of the new mangers is up. I will be so glad when I no longer have to deal with the old, falling-apart mangers. They were originally built as box mangers for cows back in the dark ages. Over the years we have done several modifications to make them work better for sheep. But it has gotten to the point that I have to put them back together almost every night. Time for a change.

Napping in the manger

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Levi was a big help cleaning the barn today… when he wasn’t being a hindrance. He shoveled, he go-fered, he advised. He also ran around, played with the kittens, chased the chickens, and played pirate. He was “Calico Jack”. Here you see Calico Jack taking a rest in the mizzenmast.

Barn Cleaning Day

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Today was the big day, barn cleaning. In spring and in fall we clean out the bedding pack. Not a pleasant task, but needs to done. The sheep get to spend the whole day outside, but they keep running back to the barnyard every half hour or so to see if we are done yet.

I drove the ditch witch while Sissy and Levi did the shovel work. (With June supervising.) 11 hours bouncing around on the ditch witch. Everything hurts, my ears are ringing, and I feel like I am still bouncing around.

But, the job is done and the barn is nice and clean. Tomorrow Sissy and I will attempt to build mangers.