I’m not sure if you remember back when we built this gate. It is a nice and sturdy thing, but a bit overkill for the sheep paddock. It’s too big to move easily and so we just keep hoping over the fence to go to the sheep barn and check on babies. Yeah, we’re too lazy to walk all the way over to the purple gate and use that. Of course, being over fifty now, hopping fences is not quite as easy as it used to be. Well, I guess to be honest, I only started hopping fences in the last couple years and it’s always been a tad bit difficult.., but I digress.
The girl children have been hopping the fence easily, but I just was getting tired of it. Plus, I really have not liked the bright blue stripe that I started to paint the WHOLE gate with and the girls stopped me. Thank goodness. I can hardly stand the stripe, can you imagine if I had succeeded and gotten the whole gate that bright bright blue?
Well, as spring has finally sprung here at Windhaven… one of the first projects on tap was a bit og gate shuffling. Now, lovely new gates at the Tractor Supply Hut are lovely and beautiful and just lovely… did I mention lovely? But they can be a little pricey and when you pretty much have zilch to spend, that means you get to improvise. And reuse. And move stuff around. So we had a lovely nice post and a bag of quick crete. So Maggie and I dug a hole and planted the post you see in the middle. And then after it was set… we left it overnight… we came back out and removed the big gate. 
Jessy distracted the herd with some crack corn on the sidewalk cafe. We love the sidewalk cafe. So do the hoofies. You just pour a bit of treat feed along the whole thing and no one pushes or shoves because they all get to eat their fill. Or at least half their fill. Because I have to say, I have yet to see a sheep or goat stick their nose up to a bucket of feed and say, “Oh, no thanks, I’m stuffed!”… they will eat and eat and eat and eat some more. If you let them. They just have no self control.
Well, remember the lovely little gate we made for the courtyard fence that blew over in the bad fall storm? Well, you can bet your bottom dollar we kept that and considered it here and there, but finally, I thought, it would be delightful right there. And it sort of matches the rustic feel of the slab wood paddock fence much more, don’t you think? We had a broken piece of slab wood and it fit the extra space so perfectly! Now we have a EASY gate to walk through when we need to. Or at least I do. The girls still hop the fence.
Since we had the corded drill (it’s much more powerful than the cordless) we took a little time to add a couple spare boards to the hay feeder. It’s held up remarkably well and serves the flock nicely. But it was getting a wee bit wobbly, so the new boards helped and we sunk a couple extra screws here and there to just help hold it all in shape. Not too shabby for something we whipped together from free scrap lumber and a couple of purchased rough boards.
Now, what did we do with the blue gate? Well, we moved it out to the pony paddock! It fits perfectly! We can now keep the ponies off their big pasture if it’s too muddy or if we want to give their pasture a rest so it grows a bit. They still have the barn and a nice big walk out area for sunshine. I just love when a plan comes together and works so nicely!
I’d like to paint the pony barn doors pretty soon, just waiting for the right mood to strike me. They are going to be white with a dark purple stripe! Just because I love purple and we happen to have two cans of a very nice purple. It’s really a sort of artsy plum… with a touch of gray. Very nice. Hip and trendy. Just gotta love those mistinted paints! I’m going to paint the green feed room door as well. So they all match.
This is a rare sight for sure. All the four goaties all lined up and smiling for a group portrait. Rana and Rafeka and Buttercup and Daisy. All grown up! We hope that Buttercup is expecting… Rana too. Buttercup is looking a little more broad in the middle, so maybe! Just gotta wait and see!
With all the babies of late… it was getting obvious that we needed to make a little baby lamb and kid playground! So we moved a few of the wire spools that were in the pony pasture, into the sheep paddock. Perfect! Add a little slide we found on the curbside one afternoon and some steps from an friend’s old deck and you have a no expense baby playground! They were all a little scared of it at first, but it only took them a few days to get the hang of it. Of course, Jelly Bean is the master, being a goat, he took to the lofty perch right away. The other adult goats like it as well… they jump up and lay on the top one… fighting to see who gets to be King or Queen of the mountain. It’s all good!
Since we were on such a roll… We decided to tackle one more little project. Replacing the dog yard door. We had just put a very cheap door there last spring, one of those $20 cheapies that is hollow core and solid without any windows. It worked, but with the rain, and the use, it was warping and just nasty. We knew that we wanted to put a good screen door in there, but just hadn’t encountered one quite yet. And then we got the wood stove and had to remove the screen door on the extra door up front! Perfect! So we just relocated it to the screen porch and it’s absolutely much more useful. It needs to be cleaned up good, but we are trying to get a power washer soon and hope to really put that baby to use! (A homestead can get so messy, so fast with spring mud and animals and such!) Right now though, it’s absolutely wonderful… it lets in nice light and is so much nicer looking than the old warped door. And the solid bottom is nice, even if our dogs were door scratchers, which they aren’t, they do occasionally get muddy footprints on it, and if it were screen, it would just be easier to mess up. We love it… perfect!
Well, those are a few of our Tuesday project day! We reused and moved a few doors and gates and old wire spools and made everyone happy! A lovely end to a lovely spring day!
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