All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again!
With apologies to Mother Goose, maybe they should have found a farmer.
As I wrote about
before, the old barn at our farmstead served two families well. But, as the grand old lady was taking her final bows, Randy hired a local company to pull it down. Since the barn provided the lane for loading cattle into trailers, we needed a new method.
Randy sketched out a plan and ordered some new fencing and gates. He and Ricky worked on installing it, including some time welding some of the closures together. (No eyes were harmed in the photography of this blog post. From the time I was a little girl, my dad told me never to look at the welding spark. Randy reminded me again as I watched him.)
With my familiar landmarks gone, I am a little like a hiker on a cloudy day without a compass as I stand in the corral these days. But the new lane is now ready to use.
Right now, the heifers are at this location, awaiting their debut as mamas. Their first babies will start arriving at the end of January.
We'll use some new gates - along with some old ones - to sort mamas and babies as needed into the calving shed or to separate pairs into different corrals.
The old wooden gate was near the southeast corner of the barn.
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| You can see the wooden gate and its proximity to the barn in this 2014 photo. |
The gate is still in service, but it certainly looks different without the mammoth barn beside it.
I'll be helping Randy back up the trailer to the lane, rather than the barn, as we've done for so many years.
Hopefully, Randy's plans will work as well in reality as they do on paper!
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| Cattle loading and the barn - April 2011 |
The view is totally different without the barn. it must take some getting used to.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, I need a compass! I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually!
DeleteMiss Kim,
ReplyDeleteI have two thoughts:
1) Randy is wearing a hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans and there is no snow on the ground! I think it will be April before I can say that about my Hubby. I bet we have snow longer than that.
2) I hope the new coral design works like Randy and you think it will. It's always great when a design and/or plan works in action, like you think it will when planning.
I'm glad you are getting in the mode to calf and we are not!
A very different view, no barn but the silo stills towers over the new corral. Do you still use the silo?
ReplyDelete