The Building of a Barn (Part 4)

So, two weekends ago Dakota competed at 4-H District Events. She presented her "Are you puzzled about wholesale cuts of pork?" illustrated talk. There were 4 people in her age division/category. She didn't win but she got a blue award, meaning she received enough points to qualify for a blue award. I videoed her talk so she could use it for her own personal criticism and critique, so I didn't get any pictures of her giving the talk, but I do have this one of her with her award.

When we got home this is what we found:

We have a roof! It was so scary sitting there watching those guys run around on that roof like they were little spider monkeys. I decided I was glad I hadn't been there all day because I think my stomach would have been in knots watching them work. I prayed all day that no one would get hurt - and, thankfully, no one did. Okay - so Jeremiah did fall off of a ladder late in the day and scared me (and everyone else) half to death. Nothing like watching someone fall - in... slow... motion. But thankfully he just got scraped up a little on the arm where he tried to grab the roof on his way down - and had to change his underpants! Just kidding, that was me!

It took the guys the rest of the weekend to finish screwing it down and getting the facia boards ready and all the other "little" stuff that goes into getting a roof on securely. I actually think they ended up only getting one side of the facia boards ready and decided to call it quits for a few days. They were exhausted!

One of the next steps is to pour concrete on the east and west ends. The front half (the west end, on the right in the pictures above) will house our feed room and the back half (the east end, on the left in the pictures above) will house the piggies.

Lots still left to do - but it's coming along rather nicely, I think. And it's been so nice to sit under in the late afternoons. It's almost a shame we're going to start closing sections of it in. It makes a nice pavillion! Little bit of an overkill for just hanging out in the afternoons, though, I guess!

In other news, during spring break Drake spent a couple of days over at Mimi and Pops' house. While he was there he decided he needed to build his own barn for his farm animals. This is the end result

He and his Pops even built trusses for the roof! I think they did an amazing job and Drake has spent many an hour playing with this since he brought it home. He's now decided it's too small and that he needs to build a bigger one out of the scrap wood from daddy's barn. We'll see. He'll probably make that a summer project.

And just in case you're wondering, no, we didn't eat that many popsicles. His Mimi bought him some sticks at the craft store!