Shari's Gone Country

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Holiday? What holiday!

Whew! Now things can get back to a more leisurely pace. You see, this last holiday weekend, was really one big "work party".

Thursday afternoon, Bev, Mom and I made a trip into Cedar City for lumber, chicken feed, and a few groceries. By the time we were done... the first paycheck was history. The lumber we bought cost just over $400 and that is about half what we need.

A couple weeks ago, Clyde, another neighbor of ours had come over and spent some "tractor time". The first day, he leveled the new corral area and we removed the east wall from Dusty's stable/stall area.

A few days later, he returned with a great big auger (12 inches). So much for Bev and I continuing to dig post holes by hand. The only trick with his big auger on the tractor was that we had to really lean hard on it to get it to dig a hole straight down. Ya' don't want no crooked posts when you're building stuff, ya' know.

So, now we have all the posts we need, and enough lumber to frame in the roof line (we think).

Michael, the guy Cindy works with at the farm has a lot of construction experience and offered his help for the weekend. Mom offered to feed him, and that sealed the deal.

Bev and Cindy both had to work Friday, and I took time to get as much writing done as possible, as well as install some additional software. Aside from chores, we really didn't do much outside.

Saturday morning, we did chores at Clyde's (they had gone out of town and asked if we'd feed). I took care of all the chores here... that's about an hour's work now, with the three horses, sheep, and chickens.

We set about backfilling posts. With nearly 20 posts, that was a lot of shovel work, and leveling and plumb bobbing. We had to pull and swap one set of posts for more height, and move a couple other posts so they'd line up straight.

Once Michael was here, we were able to frame most of the roof line. Bev headed for town to get still more lumber... an additional 10 2x6x12 footers. The rest of us worked until we got chased to the house by a thunderstorm/windstorm.

Sunday afternoon was more of the same. Bev and Cindy had things to do in Enterprise in the morning, so I "chored" at Clyde's as well as here before Michael got here.

We finished the side boards and part of the back wall before once again getting chased in by thunderstorms. It was just one of those weekends for weather.

Monday was a bit more relaxed with chores, and only a little outside work before enjoying dinner with neighbors.