Yes, this morning it started raining....slowly and sprinkling at first, then as a steady drone....on and on...picking up intensity from time to time. It has been raining all day long now and the water is polling in and under the snow. It is good that it is melting the snow, but now we have water running into the basement, from the Bilco Doors, which were improperly installed. (I need to fix them this summer) The rain is to continue...extremely heavy at times and is to cause flooding in low lying areas. Tomorrow, we are going to Vermont, to have our car serviced where we bought it in Bennington. After that is completed, we are traveling up into Washington County to pick up some maple syrup from the farmer we deal with. He will be boiling some sap tomorrow afternoon and we’ve been invited to observe the operation and talk to them for awhile. I sure hope we don’t meet with any problems with rural flooding along the way.
We have water in the entryway of the barn again. It was beginning to seep into the hen house again too. By now, the henhouse will be flooded like it was last Saturday, causing the chickens to stay on the roost, tunnel and higher sections which are matted. This summer, I will again build up the floor with crusher dust and place the rest of the rubber mats on top. When we’re done, the floor stone (crusher dust) should be two inches higher than the outside landscape...then the 1” rubber matting is placed on top of that, leaving the floor of the barn a full three inches above the outside ground level, preventing the water from entering the barn and keeping the animals high & dry. The moron we had cleaning in there this past summer (and the two before that) kept shoveling the stone away, leaving the floor lower than the outside ground level. THUS....the barn is a water bowl.
I’ve always been baffled that we cannot keep anyone around to clean full time, because very few of the folks up here want to work, yet when you finally got one here to clean......they did far more work than they needed too, actually screwing things up, making them a hindrance, rather than an asset. The person doing it now, has it figured out right, she stops when she gets to the stone floor...a great indicator that you’ve dug deep enough to get all the doo-doo.
Anyway, the “water Bowl” distinction has earned its way to the most important summer project! It occupies spot #1 on my list, followed closely by #2, which is to install concrete collection boxes...one under the overshot at the front sliding door and another at the back sliding door. They will be grated and direct water through pipes to the pond. Next winter when we experience the melt, the water WILL have a place to go, other than the barn.
The third thing we are going to do is build a small farm store against the front of the barn. In it, we will house the maple syrup, honey, refrigerator for the eggs, soft drink, water, cheeses and frozen chickens. There will be shelves and bins to hold processed fibers, yarns and raw fiber too. It will give us a controlled area to store and offer our farm items for sale, instead of keeping it all over the house and farm. The egg stand is doing great and will continue to offer 24/7 service availability for our drive in customers......year round!
The best news of the day is that we are finished with the gift shop for a little bit. The carpet is ordered and when it comes, we will install it and then the toe board kick plates around the wall at the floor. We also must devise and rip a hook strip all the way around the upper wall. It will allow us to hank metal clips over it, with wire to hang the art pictures without driving nails into the wall boards. All we will need to do is add a clip to the rail and hang a picture. When we take it down, all we do is remove the clip and drop it into a drawer until needed again. Below are a slew of pictures we took. The need no explanation. We are rather proud of the progress and the way it turned out. When we can get in there to work again, we will place the new cupboard in its location, install the top, build an internal rack for the printer and get the account system up and running.
We’re almost there folks!
038148Cluckin' "A" Critter Farm, LLC
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