When you have livestock, you have a mix of bedding/hay/feed and poo.. When you use the deep pack method, you have to do big clean outs, those with equipment and planned buildings for said equipment can do it in very quick order as they can turn their piles

We have old buildings, we have no machines to help us and so its the old fashion way of Pitch Fork, Shovels, wheel barrels or sleds depending on the time of year and lots of sweat.

We are not planning at this time to add any bigger livestock to the farm and if we do, they would be housed in the Big Barn with the horses, there is two very large areas, one that was our pig barn lots and one that was our winter sheep area, plus the horses. Even if we do take down the front of the big barn and that is part of my plan to have done, that addition would stay.

So that means a overall redo of the smaller croft barn, including taking out all the current stalls, a deep cleaning, repair work as needed on the building and a rebuild inside the croft barn itself. We are going to move the layer chicken pen to the other end of the barn that still has the attached outdoor safe pen for fresh air and one flexible pen that can be used for raising meat birds or used for broody duck hens and their ducklings etc.

The other end is going to be cleaned out, the double pen taken apart, any repair work as needed and rebuilt as the clean room/tack room/freezer and where the seedlings get started etc It already has power and it will have heat as well.

The middle is still on debate but as its currently just a open space, other then needing sorting what is on the pallets its just there. I want at least one or two full size dog pens for future needs for both the dogs but also if ever need to treat a sick barn cat, help tame a wild stray cat and or whatever.

We have been up to the top of the croft barn and its dry, stable and we are giving thought to flooring it and putting in access stairs and a trap door and doubling our space.

This is a big winter project and its perfect for Miss R, she will get to learn how to use the correct tools and how to build inner pens/walls/doors and more. This will prove to be most useful skills to have when we rebuild the “red” shed by the big barn.

When it comes to farm buildings, small outbuildings, and so on, it time, weather, critters have access to it, its going to at some point require repair.. It really felt good to see how much progress has been made both in the yards and the croft barn over the past days. It will be the last big project and turn over to the closer croft barn and being designed to be our “age out” barn.

30 Day challenge – Day 18 of blogging.