Oh Deer!!

It has only been a few short weeks since the last trip to 13 Dog Farm, but there were many tasks that needed completion. With the big focus on mo-mowing last trip there was no progress made on the plateau storage unit. So with that in mind another quick trip was scheduled with the goal of completing the storage unit and doing some (small) amounts of mowing. As usual Honey and Bun were onsite to supervise everything, especially the unloading of food!

This trip was a little different than most, Friday was a regular work day, complete with evening deployment (aka PermaShift). While on a conference call a new visitor was “spotted” on the plateau, a fawn, still with spots, and it’s mother.

The deer up here are very different from the subdivision deer. They are much more wary and if they hear anything even remotely threatening they run for the woods

The days are still long on the farm and with the sun not setting until after 8 there was plenty of time to mow the plateau and add two more panels to the solar array. The array is now 800 watts and this will help recharge batteries faster, especially as we head into the darker winter months. We must have adequate power on hand to run the Keurig, and microwave bacon too!

Saturday morning came along and with it heavy rains, that would not work well to build a storage unit so tasks were shifted to barn repair. The big barn is very old, and was made from materials found onsite. The good part is the entire barn is made of oak, even the siding is thick oak planks. The strong wood has helped even though over the years problems with the foundation occurred. It is not uncommon for old barns to slide off their foundation as they often do not have real footings, just large rocks. That happened with our barn and the entire corner sagged.

When repairing a barn the adjustments need to be made over time, if you raise it too fast you can crack the supporting beams and cause collapse. A productive half day was spent however and several temporary support posts were installed.

The barn looks much better already, and the temporary posts will prevent it from sagging further. In a future trip we’ll raise the barn more until we get it back to it’s original height.

All work was carefully monitored by Honey and Bun who have decided that the old hay bales make excellent beds where they can nap and watch the barn repairs progress.

By mid afternoon the rain had stopped and it was time to get to work on the storage unit. Pokey got a chance to try out his new post hole digger. The post hole digger has a 9 inch auger and can dig a 4 foot deep hole in less than a minute once you are lined up in position. This is so much easier than digging holes by hand!!

Having Saturday shortened by rain it wasn’t possible to complete the storage unit, but the floor has been built so the next trip it should make for an easy completion.

Similar to the barn work, the storage unit work was performed under the watchful supervision of the labs, sometimes even the elusive green lab would appear, fresh from swimming in the pond!

Just as the storage unit floor was complete the storms started rolling back in making for some beautiful views.

So with that it was time to head back to the barn, escorted, as always, by the ever watchful Bun

The last item on the trip was to bring back some tobacco sticks for craft projects. The big barn has a stall which has pallets full of tobacco sticks. There were also sticks in the small barn, so a few were loaded up for the trip back. The small barn does not have anywhere near as many sticks as the main barn, but what was loaded into the truck was less than 20% of the sticks in the small barn. We have a lifetime supply of tobacco sticks for projects and, one day, for growing some tobacco!

— Al