It's Just A Chin. And A Barn.

It's done! Well, mostly done. I spent all day yesterday working with Dustin and Jesse on the barn, and our efforts finally paid off. First, I feel that I should point out that my slave labor force managed to stay up till 5 a.m. playing some newfangled skateboarding video game, and therefore did not get out of bed until about 11, whereas I had been knocking around the house since 8:30. Even sausage biscuits could not coax them out of bed, which is just about unheard of. So, tired of waiting, Ayden and I went out and used the circular saw to shorten the remaining outside posts and installed the rafter boards. I cut, hauled the lumber, hoisted it over my head to sit ontop of the posts, and hammered. Ayden handed me nails. As you can imagine I was pretty well fuming, with such thoughts as, "Boy, its a sad day when a 3 year old is more help than a husband" running laps through my head. Ayden and I worked for about 2 hours before the boys stirred and Dustin came out to help. I will say in his defense, though, that he and Jesse more than made up for their slow start, and we did indeed finish the blasted thing the same day. I finished hanging the door this afternoon, and have already applied sealer to about half of it. I still have to install some sort of latch for the door, figure out some way to separate the stalls, and paint it brown. Then it will be a bona fide, if not fancy, barn! My goal this whole time has been to finish it before Tierra and Harmony are due to kid, which is only about 4 weeks from now. *whew!* The goats seem to like it and each one made a point to take a turn about the room to inspect it, promptly hopping up on the stanchion and fighting over who got to be king-of-the-stanchion.
Here are some pictures of the inside. They now have a waterproof 15x15 area to hang out in.













This is a view of where the two stalls will be. You can see that we've brought in some dry leaves for bedding, mixed with some shredded paper that I scavenge from various offices to use for free animal bedding. It will find it's way to the compost heap for use on the garden when it's soiled.
This is a picture of the oposite corner where their hayrack is, which I've now bolted into the wall. That sucker ain't going nowhere! You can also see their pan of minerals, some old buckets that have yet to find a new home, and the step stool mentioned in a previous blog, which was the only form of a ladder used in this project. I can't tell you how many times I heard Jesse say, "Man, you guys really gotta get a ladder!"













So, at this point you might have asked yourself what on earth the title of this blog is about. Well, no goats were harmed in the making of this barn, but my chin was. While hammering one of the wall pannels on, the nail went flying right into my face and caught me on the chin. I screamed OUUUUUUUUCH! After I finished successfully getting the nail in, I asked Jesse if I was bleeding and his eyes got big and said, "Yes. A lot." Oh, dear. It did win some serious honey-I-don't-like-to-see-you-bleeding faces from Dustin and I got to hear him cluck over me like a mother hen, so it was not a complete waste.