The weather has been out of control here. Our normally mild coastal climate has turned on us and two nights ago, it snowed. It never snows here. And I woke up stressed about Fin and Sheldon not having enough shelter. Because we don’t get much wild weather, we never built a real water tight shelter. The sheep and goat would lounge in the luxury of the sheep bunker, which really was just a section of retaining wall with a roof on it. The problem is Fin won’t go in the sheep bunker when Sheldon is in there. She usually sleeps on to of the sheep bunker which has minimal shelter from the roof overhang but it’s not warm and it’s not water tight. yesterday, at about 5pm, I came up with a brilliant plan: cut a hole int he side of the house and let the livestock in the basement of our Ben Lomond house! Dave, my dearest husband, said, “OK. We better hurry it’ getting dark.” God, I love that man.
Now, before you go thinking I’ve lost my mind and dragged Dave down with me, I should explain how our basement works. The basement is divided into three parts. The laundry room and the main room sit on a cement slab. They are essentially finished rooms, or could be finished easily. To the left side of the main room is a door that leads to the part of the basement that is under the addition. When the addition was added before I bought the house they decided to frame in the basement area bu not finish anything out. One side of the room leads under the deck (scary) the other sides are framed in and the whole thing sits on a dirt floor. We usually use that room for storing tools and things in plastic bins.
I’ve been considering ways to put the animals in that part of the basement for a while. Dave has shot them all down, mostly because it involves trying to get the livestock to go through the main part of the basement, without disturbing the mountains of stuff we have stored down there. He was right to say no way. Sheep horns in a small space is a recipe for disaster.
Of course, cutting a goat door in the wall solved everything. So we cleaned out the room, stuffed more stuff into our already crowded basement (Dave is a hoarder) and got to deconstructing.
I laughed as we started cutting with the circular saw because this was total crack-head style construction. There we were in the cold and dark, on the back side of the house, cutting a hole in our wall, to let the sheep in. I’m sure my father is very proud.
Parts came off quickly. Originally, we thought it would take two hours to do but we were done in just over an hour. It took us longer to clean out the room than deconstruct the walls.
Chaos assisted with keeping the curious goat out of the room while Hubby removed dangerous nails from the wall.
now I can sleep soundly knowing Fin and Sheldon are warm and dry in the inclement weather. I even did a nice warm straw bed for them. Fin, who doesn’t have much winter coat seemed especially grateful. Well, as grateful as a goat can be.
Eating My Words 