Hay shed – Delivered
someday something will go smoothly
I had to cut my Thanksgiving visit with my family in Wisconsin short in order to be home for the delivery of our hay shed (the cost of which still needs to find a budgetary home: third horse budget or pasture/hay-field planting budget?). The ground has been solidly frozen for a while, since that unreasonably cold weather set in right after we finally got a decent amount of rain. Though that has made the actual paddock track area pretty hard to navigate for both the girls and the hay and poop carts it also meant we were confident that when they delivered the hay shed they would be able to make use of the former corn field to back it in to place. That option would have worked great on any morning other than the morning the hay shed was actually delivered. Every other night it has frozen enough that the field would have (probably) been sufficiently firm except the night before they delivered it the weather stayed mild and the field didn’t refreeze; as soon as they drove their truck fully into the field it got stuck. Yay.
The driver got out of the truck and asked us what we had available to pull him out and the answer was “nothing.” We have one electric riding lawn mower and two cars purchased for their small and easy to parallel park size and good gas mileage; towing or pulling anything isn’t even in an adjacent realm of possibility much less this one. We do however have some amazing neighbors. After several frantic calls, we were able to come up with a skid steer and two pick-up trucks and it took all three to get the job done. First, they unloaded the hay shed from the truck’s stuck position and used the skid steer to get it into place. That part went fairly well, a few dents notwithstanding. The getting the actual truck and trailer out of the field was much harder and ultimately required two different pick-up trucks to get it out. Our yard and driveway took some collateral damage but they have never been particularly great so in the grand scheme of things that was not that important. I however missed almost all of this drama because in order for one of our neighbors to come over and help I had to go to their house to watch their two grandchildren who were a little too young to bring along; being only four and two. So, while skid steers and pick-up trucks were in use at my house, I was playing restaurant, and make-up party, and fairy princess house, and sleep-over party, and several other games whose premises I was never clear on but we switched gears within five minutes so it didn’t really matter.
I was able to return in time to see the truck and trailer finally pulled from the field and watched as he anchored the hay shed in about 15 minutes. All six anchors in 15 minutes! Let that sink in. It took Nate and I several full weekends to get our anchors in; unquestionably worth it to have him do the anchoring. Now we have our full complement of sheds: shelter shed, soon to be “barn” shed, and hay shed.
We also got a fresh load of free pallets that I didn’t even have to go get! In a fortuitous turn I had contacted the foreman of the crew that built our house about something totally unrelated and right at the end of our conversation he asked if we needed pallets because he had some he had to get rid of. Yes, yes we would! We almost have enough for two full layers of pallets, and we probably do have enough once we can get to the ones currently in-use in the “barn” shed.
Still deciding what to use to block the elements a bit from the two “stall” ends of the “barn” shed. My original idea was to use rigid foam insulation boards or possibly some plywood, but one of our neighbors has used some clear plastic stuff for a door of sorts for her goat shed and feed room I am intrigued. More research will be done i.e. texting as soon as I remember at a time I can actually text; as in not when driving past their house and thinking “I really need to text her about what she used for her goat shed.” Hopefully we can get it all done before it gets super cold again. There is also the complicating factor that one of the “stalls” is currently housing close to 90 bales of hay and Nate and I are still in negotiations about whether that hay will stay there until we use it up in the normal course of things or if it can be moved sooner so I can have my full “barn” shed.
There are still many more projects I would like to get done, but finally feeling like we’re actually getting close to having the full Plan B up and running!
