Day 358

This winter, I hope to be productive in the barn. Obviously, we will need to do daily checks on our lovely chickens, adding water and food, and removing eggs and manure. But even without the birds, there are many tasks to be completed. Besides continuing to tweak our organization and make the barn more user-friendly, I hope to improve my carpentry skills by fortifying the coops. I used up some sawdust to fill in a gap between the wood walls and the siding. I figured it would act like insulation. What I didn't expect was that this area would become a favorite spot for some of the girls to lay their eggs. It makes collecting much easier and cleaner and is a very easy way to use some of the many, many bags of free sawdust we have accumulated from the high school woodshop. I am contemplating adding similar spots in some of the other stalls.

I’m also looking forward to putting together a mud kitchen for the kids using a bunch of pallets and scrap wood. I don’t think we’ll be adding any new raised beds for the garden but if needed, I’ll make some of those as well.

I’m also excited to prepare our new birdhouses. I have the poles. The houses are made. I just need to decide on the location and get the poles ready to attach the actual houses.

With all this planned for a harsh, brutal Wisconsin winter in an unheated pole barn with a history of chilly drafts, we had to make plans to make it less insufferable. A friend was getting rid of a large metal patio heater. Being thrifty, we scooped it right up. While it sat unused in our backyard for over a year, we tested it out before hosting a Halloween gig in our barn. When it turned on, we were happy. When we felt how warm it made the barn, we were ecstatic. This made the thought of spending cold winter days working in the barn much more appealing. Considering I have a wireless speaker, a CD player with my high school CD’s, and a heat source, I might actually enjoy the work.