We’re deep into building our second sheep shelter. The ones we built three years ago went up faster, but they were smaller and had no floor, which meant they couldn’t be moved later. These have a double floor on 6×6 skids, which doubles the amount of lumber involved although not the build time. Framing is far more time consuming than laying a floor. It looks like George won’t be leaving, so we’ll have four sheep breeding groups as well as the horses and pigs. We’re alternating milling lumber and making it into sheds.
The first broody hen has (at least) three chicks as of this morning. One of today’s tasks is to get them down onto the floor and get water and powdered pellets out for the chicks. I also want to try one last mushroom walk: There were both shaggy manes and puff balls in the yard over the weekend, so just perhaps there are some in the woods.
The garden hose was frozen this morning. With the number of critters we have this year, I think we’ll try keeping it in the house and unreeling it every morning. Not real fun, but better than carrying buckets for the horses.
We got the smoked meat back from the butcher Friday. The meat is delicious, however it could have been smoked a bit longer. Smoking our own becomes one more item on the infinite list. Otherwise we’re very happy with the butcher. When Lisa went down Friday, there were multiple drop-offs in progress, and they were still taking care of the animals and making sure they were comfortable.