December 3, 2022 - Day 6

Saturdays are kind of my down day - kind of. I feed the pigs 'n poultry in the morning and then that's it. Today was a little different because we needed to replace the "roof" on the pig shelter so that the stall would be dry. 

The tarps that I picked up at Harbor Freight were for pig shelters. Big Momma and Big Daddy's shelter was done. It was the easy one, the one I could do by myself. Plus it gave me a little bit of time with our breeding pair. They are SUPER sweet. A little love starved maybe, but sweet. They like to rub their heads on my leg and me being 5'3" they could easily just knock me over!

Anyway - after I went to my friend's holiday bazaar we worked on getting the 12' x 20' tarp on the old parking structure. Yeah, I don't remember the previous tarp we purchased being that big, but it must have been. 

Once we got the tarp mostly on the roof, it was time to start coming up with a game plan. I'm getting better with being off the ground, but I did have some trepidation at the beginning - Tom wanted me to toss is drill up to him (I was on a ladder he was on the roof), but I didn't feel that I could actually do it. That drill is heavy! So I sucked it up and tossed it as far as I could and it got close. That's a win for me! Then the strips of wood that would hold the tarp down around the edges. Once we started getting things going Tom figured out that he had made a mistake and we had to re-group. Which is good, because if he went much further then it would have been a real problem. 

In the end we were able to get the tarp in place and secured. In my past life, I would have wanted the tarp to be perfect. Like stretched out and smoothed and looking nice. Fortunately, I'm not like that so much anymore. 

As you can see in the pic the tarp isn't as smoothed out as it could be, but let's be honest, who really cares? 

If we can get the boys to go in there at night instead of sleeping on the wood chip pile that would make me happy. We are planning to get a bale of straw to spread out in there before the weekend is over. That should help make this space feel more "homey."

It only took a couple of years for us to realize that we didn't need a tall door to keep a momma and her piglets locked in the stall. Notice how we used plastic to cover the window. It's ugly, but effective. 

The rear of the pig house isn't as visually pleasing, but I don't care and neither do the pigs. The reality is, I want to a least fix the portion where the planks came down. Another note, this structure is so old I'm surprised that it is still standing! One of the goals is to get it fixed up and use it for storage. How about that garbage bag that is stapled over the window?! It does the job and the pigs won't know the difference!