I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Or, in this case, my family.  And it was a lot of help.

Saturday was goat house building day.  The temporary pen in the garage where the goats have been housed for the last month or so was getting tight.  And the moving them back and forth every day wasn't going as well as it was previously.  They'd figured out that there were many nice things to eat along the trip, and had decided to start to eat them.  Wrangling them was getting to be a pain, so it was time.  We found a weekend that everyone was available, and we got together to build.

You know how I feel about building by now, I think.  I JUST LOVE IT!!!!  If I can build, I am happier than anyone on the planet.  I LOVE building.  It is my life.  I woke up that morning with new purpose, thinking, "Yes!  Today I add some OTHER thing to this property.  Joy!  Happy Day!"

Then I did a little happy dance of bliss, scattering flower petals to the winds.

And when I woke up, I remembered that no, I really don't like to build after all.

Sigh.

But it was still goat house building day, and luckily, I do have quite a few family members who DO like to build, and are actually quite good at it, so I was safe.  All I had to do was follow directions.

That I can handle.

My brother and his girlfriend, both engineers, came down from their house in Albany to help.  My brother is the one who designed the house, and let me tell you, if a tornado hits, I'm going to sit in the goat house.  That thing is NEVER going to come down.  It's a wonder.

The first thing he and his girlfriend did was figure out the base, and level it, because nothing on this property is level. 

I was very helpful at this point and watched.  After a while, my mom and I started building, so the base was finally level, we could put the walls up.  It went from the above picture....

....to this in a couple of hours.  Then everyone, especially my brother, had to come and kick it a little and see how sturdy it was and make sure it was square and level.

Which, quite honestly, is the sign of an amateur, because as those of us "expert" builders know, it's much harder to build something that's not square or level.  I know, because I do it all the time.  You have to be a real pro to build something that's slanting out of whack.  But, we can't all be as good as me. 

Anyway, my brother cut the roof rafters, we put them up, and then we started siding it.  Then it looked like this:

Ooooooh!!!

Then it was time to stop and take pictures and then clean up, because it was past dinner time and we were all beat.

I'm pretty sure every one of us collapsed into bed that night after everyone had gotten home. 

The next day, my husband and I finished closing it in.  It now looks like this:

Le goat house

Dum da da dum dum DUM!!!!

Like the blue tarp on the roof?  The roofing was special order, so it's sheeted, but not finished.  The roof will be done separately.

Other than some paint and trim and roof and adding the windows, the house is done and the girls are moved in.  Do they like it?

I don't know.  Two out of the three now have diarrhea, though, so maybe?  Possibly that's a goat's seal of approval?  Christening their new digs?  They're not talking.

So Chicken Scratch had it's own barn raising, and with many, many thanks to my brother, his girlfriend, my mom and dad and my husband, there's a beautiful new goat house standing where there once was none.

And I'm glad it's over. 

The end.