Yesterday was an exciting day for us, the goats and the cats! We moved the goats (Sally Sue, Bree & Ziggy) and cats (Reiki & Grr), who like to be where the goats are, into the new goat house!! This is a project we have been working on and planning for a long time.
Last Spring, when we got goats, we put them in a temporary house & yard that we wanted to eventually use for a Chicken coop. In the meantime we cleared the area where we eventually wanted to move them. Our original idea was to convert the old greenhouse Jeff built into the new goat house. The greenhouse has been around awhile and the wood is all rotten now. When we realized how much work & money it was going to take to rebuild the greenhouse, we started brainstorming. We had our chicks ordered for this Spring, we needed to have the Chickens where the goats were & we wanted to have a new home for the goats in time for kidding (April.) Jeff & I love finding solutions around here. Many times we have things we need to build with no money, this is when we get really creative and resourceful. We have a treaure hunt and use odds and ends we find, to transform into something beautiful and useful.
One day Jeff had a brilliant idea for the new goat house…. we had a carport in the front yard that we had been wanting to move. It was well built, it had a solid metal frame with a tarp over it. Jeff said “what if we used the carport for the new goat house?” The question hung in the air in a moment of silence while we both pondered away.
“Brillaint!!” I exclaimed! We got to work! We got rid of an old trailer that was in the way, moved the car port down the driveway & to a different part of the land just the two of us, which took lots of brainstorming & experimenting. Pulled up the old stakes to reuse in holding it down, which took a jack & a lot of work. Reassembled the carport, used pallets that we got for free from a local lumberyard to strengthen the structure, worked at leveling it on somewhat unlevel ground.
We had a neighbor who logged behind our place & gave us permission to cut up firewood from the leftover piles that were going to be burned or just left to rot. We filled up our woodshed all summer, fall & winter with firewood. Now we needed fence posts so we went and got some long skinny logs, we felt good to make use of the precious wood! Jeff skinned the bark off the ends with his grandfather’s antique tool.
Then my sister Rachelle came to visit for the weekend and we set the posts in the ground and attached the fencing. We used a copper solution on the bottom of the logs so they would last longer (the part that was underground that the goats wouldn’t nibble on.) Thanks to our friends Star & Tom for giving us all the fencing!! We are so grateful!
We went & bought a new tarp because the old one had holes in the roof. We found a brown one that blended in better with the surrounding forest than the stark white. We left the white one underneath to give it an extra layer.
So many recycled things were used in the building of this! Our friend Star gave us a recycled wooden futon frame that we used to put their hay. We used recycled metal bed frames to keep the goats from jumping up in their hay and just put their heads through to eat. Recycled pallets, recycled fence posts, recycled fencing, recycled car port! 🙂 The list goes on & on! We spent money on the tarp ($29.99) and the metal staples for attaching the fencing to the posts ($2.00). All the nails, screws, gate latches etc. were collected from Jeff from various garage sales over the years.
There is still plenty of work to do on the new goat house, that we can do throughout the Spring & Summer, preparing for next Winter to make it warmer & cozier. We split the car port into two sections. One is for the goats, with their hay feeder. The other side is the milking room, where we will have two milking stands & store their hay & straw. It will be so nice to have a separate milking room!! It feels pretty deluxe to us!
Now what is going to happen to that old greenhouse you might be wondering? Well here came in my brilliant idea. We are going to tear it down, recycle parts that are usable & plant a Blueberry Patch!! We have a bunch of blueberry plant starts that we cloned this Spring. That will be one of our next projects. After, of course, we prepare the Chicken coop. The Chicks arrive on Monday!
Happy Spring!
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