Gimme Shelter
October 18th, 2013 · 2 Comments · Posted in farming
When you think of a classic farm, you probably picture a big, red barn. When we bought our farm property, we got a small building for tools and a goat shed, but no barn. Well, there had been a barn of some sort. But the previous owner had taken it apart with plans to rebuild it. Except he never got around to it. What we found were some concrete foundation posts and stacks of old lumber rotting away in the fields.
But we do need a place to shelter our livestock in extreme winter weather. Sheep and cattle do fine living outdoors year ’round. Yet there are those times–winter tempests when freezing temperatures combine with howling winds–when animals do better with some protection. We decided a full-scale barn was more than we needed, so we built this three-sided shelter in our permanent paddock. It’s 36 feet long and 12 feet deep, open to the south and east and protected from the weather side on the north and west.
I asked the owner of our local saw mill if he could recommend a builder and that’s how we found Tom Colby and his father-in-law, who operate out of nearby Cassayuna. Here they are framing up the structure after sinking pressure-treated posts into the ground. The lumber came from that same mill, Windy Hill in Greenwich. The exterior skin and roof are metal.
Additional planks are mounted horizontally inside the shelter as “kick boards,” to prevent the animals from damaging the metal.
It looks pretty sharp, don’t you think?
Now we have our shelter, our hay, our frost-free water hydrants, our firewood and a new, high-efficiency wood stove inside the house. I think we’re ready for whatever winter plans to dish out.
Each entry is so interesting. We are building a house on my family farm property and enjoy all the farm trials you experience. The barn/shelter looks great.
Thanks, Nancy. I’d love to hear more about your farm and the house you’re building.