Never-ending Farm Work

Since the weather has been warming up the past few weeks, we've slowly but surely been starting farm work.  There's a lot to be done, and we've barely made a dent, but at least we've started!

First and fore-most, I spent a gorgeous sunny afternoon clearing burrs from the field where the llamas are going to go.  There's still a big patch of sticker bushes that needs to be cleared though.

Patch of sticker bushes to be cleared.

A few days later we tackled the old barbed wire fence that ran through the middle of the field.  The fence had to be several decades old...most of it was buried under sod, and the posts were rotten.  Unfortunately, under all the fence we found 2 old metal rollers, plus about 6 railroad ties or telephone poles.  Once we fix the tractor we'll drag all that out of the way.

Where the fence line used to be.

The next thing we did was to take out all the window frames that had broken glass.  I got replacement plexiglass from Lowes last week, and once things warm up again I'm going to replace the glass.  The windows are all sanded, but I want to re-paint them, and then replace the glass.  Then they'll be re-installed in the barn, and I'm adding hinges to 3-4 of the windows so that they can open.

The windows on the back side of the barn.

And of course there is still a ton of stuff that needs to be done...  The next big project I want to complete (if we can do it without the assistance of the tractor) is to take out the manure mover thing beside the barn.  Most of the structure itself is wood, so it shouldn't be too hard to take out.  Unfortunately, there is probably 400' of metal "chain" running through the barn (the part that actually moved the manure through the pit), so we may need the tractor for that.

The barn-cleaning device thing that still has to be taken out.

In between doing farm work, I've been doing a lot of gardening.  Mostly weeding and prepping 2 new flower gardens.  When I go home in 2 weeks I'm going to bring back as many flowers as possible to fill in some of the gardens.  I'll try to get pictures of the gardens soon...