For Your Heckling Pleasure, I Present...

The "Goat Ghetto" that I framed up this morning. Go ahead, laugh.. heckle... whatever... I can take it.

I feel a bit like a little kid that says "Look Mommy, I did it all by myself"... to which the mother always replies "That's awesome, you did a great job! It's beautiful and I'll cherish it always!" (or something to that effect) but often in her mind thinks "Oh. Yeah. If only you'd asked for some help, I wouldn't have to deal with this ugly thing now!" Not that *I*, as a mother, EVER thought that thought, but I've HEARD from others this can sometimes be true! ;)

Before I get myself into more trouble... Moving on...

So anyhow, with all the snow we have and the wish we have that spring will arrive sometime before July, we are a little worried about our goat babies getting flooded. Well not worried, because we KNOW it WILL happen, just not sure WHEN. Could be this weekend, really.

Wednesday, Shawn took the day off work and we attended the Ottawa Valley Farm Show. It was pretty good, smaller than I expected, but we did get some contacts for some tree seedlings and stuff like that... not a waste by any means, even if they had NO and I mean ZERO goat information or products there. I think there were two sheep booths, both with mostly info for sheep's wool, not so much the actual raising of sheep.

Anyhow, since Shawn took Wednesday off and the farm show only took the morning to walk around, we decided to go to TSC and buy more chain link dog kennel panels for our goats. They were on sale this week and they are VERY useful to us and do a great job holding goats IN and predators OUT.

TSC Arnprior only had one set and when I called, they said it was buried under about 10 feet of snow, the plow guy had piled it up against them and they were really not interested in digging it out. That suited me ok, I was after 2 sets, like what we already have. I called down to Kemptville and lo and behold they had 8 sets. I had them set 2 aside for me and into Kanata we went to rent a cube van.

We drove down to Kemptville, was a lovely sunny day for a bouncy truck ride... its like a big adventure... clearly we do NOT get out enough. We made it through the round about that's right outside the TSC in Kemptville, no problems... got parked in the tiny snow filled lot and went in and paid for the kennels.

Then I had to maneuver the cube van and back down an alley into their yard. I'm sure it was just over a 100 feet and then I had to make a turn at the end. The passenger side mirror was poorly adjusted for backing up in kinda close quarters and I tried fixing it once and failed to get it perfect, so I just backed up blindly and hoped for the best. Shawn and the TSC employee were watching, so I figured someone would scream if there was a real problem!

We loaded up the 2 sets (8 panels) and off we went. Brought them home. On the way home, we debated how to put the cube van in the driveway at home... I didn't really want to have to back up the driveway off the road ... and I didn't really want to back down the driveway onto the road when I was done either. I was worried that with all the snow, there just wouldn't be room to turn it around like there is in the summer.

Finally I decided I'd just drive it in and then evaluate once I was in there and could see if I could turn around or not. I pulled in and up towards the car shelter and then backed up towards the snow bank. I did manage to turn it around in that space... twas about a 896 point turn, but I did it. It would've been easier if the damn cube van could've gone over snow piles that were like 4 inches high without spinning its wheels, but apparently its less capable than my mini van of coping with a tiny bit of snow.

We got the panels unloaded. I had the fun job of jumping up in the truck each time and down again... of course, I thought of my Dad who does that everyday all day long and I attempted to make him proud by grumbling in a similar fashion.

We returned the cube van without incident and I was happy to get back in my mini van where I can at least see behind me a little bit. I don't really mind driving the cube van though, I do wish I was good at it like my Dad though.

The point of that long story is now we have some more fence panels that are not frozen into the ground. Now we can in theory put up the fence and move the goats to higher ground and just leave the other panels and shelter until its thawed enough to really get in there and clean it all up and stuff.

Since their shelter is frozen into the ground about a foot, there's no hope of getting it out anytime soon. My idea was that I would build a quick and easy shelter and try to spend as little money on it as possible. Hence the Goat Ghetto... I think my goats may actually be embarrassed to live and be seen in it, but whatever, they are my goats... I OWN them, they'll live where ever I say ;)

I looked at many goat shelter designs online and finally decided on this one. It's triangular, but with a flat top. I'm sure that shape has a real name, but who knows / cares what it is? You get the idea.

I framed it out with some 2x3's we got last fall for free from one of Shawn's coworkers. (Thanks!!) Since we stored them in the "Red shed used for storage needs some work" over the winter, a couple of them got a bit warped. That's reason #1, its a little cockeyed.

Reason #2 was I didn't want to get the chop saw out, so I hand sawed all the boards. Apparently my hand sawing is not the greatest in the world... I know, I'm surprised too! ;)

Reason #3, I designed and built it alone.... the design is ok, I can now see a few things I might have done differently, but its ok. Building something like this alone is a real challenge. Holding boards, screws and drills and trying to get it not to move... yeah, not my greatest strength :) (If I ever figure out what my greatest strength IS, I'll be sure to post it!)

Reason / excuse #4, I didn't want to spend any money or time on it. I succeeded there. So far, the only thing that wasn't free were the deck screws I assembled it with. My time... from the time I started planning this morning til the time I came in to eat lunch... just under two hours. That includes all the measuring, the hand sawing, the board juggling, everything. Not bad, I'd say.

Clearly its not a finished project yet... it wouldn't really provide shelter yet ;) The rest of the plan for it is to try ripping some boards off one of our falling down buildings and fastening them to the ghetto hut. We'll do that for the two long sides and the back. Obviously the front will stay open. The roof, I think we'll splurge and buy a piece of plywood (unless we can find something suitable around here... we haven't really looked yet.) an that will help keep them from getting rained on, which is good.

The bottom will also stay open... I want to build a separate floor piece... basically that's a skid that the ghetto hut would sit on. This means that when we want to move it (to a new location or for cleaning), it wouldn't have to be the heaviest thing in the world and it would also keep them up off the damp ground.

Taking boards off one of our outbuildings and reusing them is actually an experiment... we plan to build a "Caprine Castle" this summer (an insulated shed) and are toying with the idea of using some of the boards off some of the worst outbuildings. This small project will give us an idea of whether that's feasible or not.

So that's what's up today... I'm just in for lunch and then I'll go feed my cute goaties lunch and then maybe poke around and see what building supplies I can find.

Yesterday, I had a little project too... I made black out blinds for our bedroom. Well, just for 2 out of 4 windows in our bedroom. All the windows have mini blinds and they are crappy for keeping out the light. In the morning, the sun actually shines through them and makes stripes of sunlight on my pillow... that's just rude.

We had some black out cloth, which is the stuff that you line curtains with (kinda rubbery cloth stuff). It was leftover from the projector screen we built at the old house. We picked up some of those really cheap curtain rods at home depot a while ago, the white, rectangular sort that hook onto brackets on the wall.

I just made very simple window coverings, I only sewed a little rod pocket at the top, I didn't hem the sides or bottom or anything. (Black out cloth doesn't seem to fray much and again I was after cheap, quick and easy!) I made one for the small window that overlooks the driveway on my side of the bed and I made one for the small window over the hot tub that's cut in half.

Those 2 windows also are the worst for showing headlights from the road. The 2 big back windows will get done, but I need more cloth to do them.

They don't look great, they are kinda weird, but they WORK really well. Last night it was nice and dark and they helped cut down on some noise too. I slept remarkably well last night, which is a friggen miracle.

The black out blinds are really temporary... until I decide on real curtains. Then, depending on the curtains, I might sew the black out cloth to the back of them or just hang curtain over top of these, we'll see what style I eventually choose. At least now, I can sleep while trying to figure out what I want in that room!!

I'm definitely not the greatest cube van driver, curtain maker or goat shelter maker... but you know, I do get credit for getting up each day and trying and getting things done, even if they are not perfect. It's gotta count for something!!

Speaking of which, I'm making another turkey for supper tonight. It won't be as good as Mom's, but since Mom isn't making me any these days ;) it's better than none! Who knows, maybe with all this practice, they'll start to turn out more like hers yet! :)

That's it for now!