Winter Projects

Winter is almost over and my projects are just beginning to be completed.  The highest priority was to get the buck barn larger.  I converted a covered deck that we used when we lived in a travel trailer while building our house to a home for the bucks.  The structure was about 12 feet long by 8 feet wide with the east side open.  Besides being too small to loaf around, rain would come in the open side keeping the half the ground area wet.  With our very wet winter this year our bucks have developed hoof problems.  We need more dry space for them.

The expanded buck house still under construction

My solution was to expand their barn another 10 x 12 feet, enclosing the west side and leaving the north side open.  We get some cold winds from the north but the rain usually comes from the southeast.  I have some left over plexiglass from my redesign of our cold frames so I will put a couple of windows on the new west wall to give a little more light in there.  Today I'll order the metal roof (right now I have plywood and tar-paper on it) and get a few more boards.  The plywood walls on the south and west sides will be covered with alder saplings that I will cut from our forest.

Pam putting down fresh straw in the boy's area

My next project is to rebuild the cold frames.  We have been using plexiglass for the lights for the past two years, before that we used plastic but that only lasts a year before needing to be replaced. The plexiglass is expensive (over $35 for a square) and when the wind blows our lids start bouncing and they break.  This year we bought a product called Sollex.  They use it for greenhouses.  It comes in 4' widths and is about $6 per linear foot.  So each light costs me about $6, and it should last 20+ years, it's light and unbreakable.

The new cold frame "light"

We ordered our 2011 chicken crop and they will be delivered April 20th.  After rebuilding the cold frames I will build a new chicken coop.  This one will be 24' x 8', with nesting boxes and three brooding sections.  One brooding section will be for turkeys, one for meat birds and one for each year's new flock of laying hens.  I'll build it about 2 feet up off the ground so rats don't live under it and tall enough so we can park our garden cart at the door and be able to rake the litter directly into the cart.  I should begin construction by the end of this month.

Winter has been long, cold and wet, and I am looking forward to warmer and dryer days ahead.  Not much snow this winter but a lot of rain with the temperatures in the upper 30's.