Buster's New Home

      Towards the back of our property there is an old shed.  The previous owners had once used it for cattle, but that had been a number of years ago.  It was pretty nasty on the inside, filled with old junk and cow manure.  I got to looking at the shed and found that it was more structurally sound than it had appeared to be. The west wall of the shed is indeed dilapidated and needs to be replaced, but the rest of the building is reasonably sound. I decided that it was worth rehabilitating the shed to serve as housing for our goat, Buster, ands whatever other animals we eventually collect.  I'm thinking about eventually doing sheep and maybe pigs.

     My daughter, Rachel, and her family visited us this past weekend.  Her husband, Chet did some serious lobbying for favorite son-in-law status as he spent most of this past Saturday helping me clean out the old shed to make it useable. The first order of business was to pull out most of the junk and wood.  After we had cleared out most of the interior, we moved one of the interior support posts so it was lined up with a second support post. Then we installed a third support post.  We attached heavy duty cattle panels to the posts to create a pen.  Yesterday and today I made and installed a gate for the pen. The pen was finally completed this afternoon.

     The last task was to remove the piece of fencing that blocked Buster's access to the barn.  I had Buster's full undivided attention while I worked on this.  I don't think he was focused on the barn entrance as much as he was on the vines which grew around the barn entrance.  Once the fencing was down, Buster immediately plunged through the opening and happily began munching on the vines.  However, a few minutes later he did notice the entrance to the barn and went inside to check out the space.  He seemed happy with the place although I'm not very good at translating goat bleats.  The place still needs to be cleaned up a bit more and could use a few bales of fresh straw.  I will also need to replace the western wall before winter comes.  In spite of the work remaining to be done I'm happy to declare victory of the time being.

   

Buster's New Home

Homemade Gate