The Barn

This last month, we have basically been working on the summer play, wrapping our home school year and waiting for the barn to be finished. Here are pictures of the barn in various stages from May 22 to June 22.

The windows are on the south side of the barn. The inside is broken into 3 sections. One for Diane's chickens, one for the llamas, and the third for equipment, office and tractor.

The third picture is of the back of the barn. You can see the garage just beyond it to the south. The house is on the other side of the garage, facing back towards the garage and barn.

Originally our plan was to put the barn behind the barn, not next to it. But the price of gravel went way up before we started. So we decided to put it beside the garage. The llama's pen will wrap around the chicken's pen to help protect them from foxes, etc.

The chickens will have two separate outside pens to rotate through. We are hoping that will help keep them with some green stuff to eat. I'm sure they will also go romp through the llama's area to help them keep
the vegetation down. We have been told that the llamas and the chickens should do fine together.

I've been putting these in order of how it was built. Here are some of the pictures from the inside of the barn.

The llamas will be next to the stairs at the front of the barn. This should make it easy to load them into the trailer and to take them out for packing down to the pond. The chickens will be at the back with the tractor across from them. We put in a double door for the tractor.

The chickens will have an exit on the side and the back to allow them into whichever pen they are to be in for the day. They will have access to the outdoors all the time. I guess that makes them modified free range.

Here is a picture of the back when it was nearly finished. As you can see the north side has no windows. We are intending on putting the compost bins up against this side of the barn.

Here is a great picture of the south side of the barn with it's windows and dutch doors. Then the inside picture to match it. Jon has been working getting it wired for the electricity this week. Then next week we will work on the plumbing.

The builders are just about finished with their part, then Jon and I will finish it off. We are guessing it will take us about a month to finish since we won't be able to work on it full time and we are still in rehearsals all next month.

The big openings on the front and back are for garage doors. We planned that way for easy cleaning. We will put a sliding wall between the llamas and the chickens. This will allow us to use the tractor to clean out the barn quickly.

Here is a picture that shows the upstairs, where the hay will be stored. On half will be open to let in the light from the upper windows. On the chicken side, we will cover it with mesh to keep them from taking over the whole barn.

With any luck the next barn pictures will include animals living there. We have arranged for two llamas so far. Our goal is three to start with. Currently our "llama layway" consists of Panda and her daughter Willow. I don't have pictures to share yet, but as soon as I do they will be up here.

Willow is just over a year. She is white with lovely dark reddish brown patches on her back, and her face. Panda is reddish brown all over with a white face and white down her front. They will be joining us in August. But Diane's chickens will move in as soon as we get their living quarters ready. They will be sharing their living space with guinea hens. The guineas will be arriving in late July. While our area has few ticks, the guineas will help ensure it stays that way.

That's about it for the barn. The garden is doing very well - in parts. Quite a few things are growing very very slowly, but we remain hopeful.