The Big Barn Blog: Summer Holidays ????

Well it has been several weeks since I last posted to the blog, but that does not mean that nothing has been happening....far from it. In fact so much has transpired that I hardly know where to begin!

The barn work kind of ground to a halt during the month of July as the tenant's at Francis' house moved out and he had a lot of work to do to get it returned to its former beauty in order to rent again. He was very disheartened by the task as his quaint little "cottage" in town looked like a run-down slum tenement....however, true to "Francis magic" it is now looking spic and span and returned ( for the most part) to the way it was when he lived there. I did my part and weeded the front flower beds and planted new perennials. IN fact, testament to all his work is the fact that it has been re-rented within 7 days of being put back out on the rental market.

I have so many pictures of the barn work that I think I will make several posts- one for each mini-project. My first comment lately when he shows me what he has done has been, "Did you take pictures?"--lol

Francis started his 3 weeks of holidays the last week of July. The first week was mostly used to revitalize his house but the last two were spent totally immersed in the barn restoration. The weather cooperated mostly as we had no rain but it was extremely hot- average temp 33 degrees C and with humidex many days were 40+. Despite this he worked many days for 10 hrs in scorching sun in order to get big jobs finished.

stall gate- finished product

One small project that was done in July was putting up stall gates for the horse stalls. These allow the horses to literally " hang out" while hanging out in the stalls. The stall gates were as usual designed by me , and Francis transformed the concept into reality... I wanted them to be in keeping with the overall feel of the barn but be sturdy enough to withstand curious horses that can be a bit pushy at times. So I started off with the idea of a board, which grew into the idea of a cedar post to be used as the "gate" aspect.

latch with hole and "thingy" in place!

Then the problem of how to attach??? Well true to the mastermind he is, Francis came up with the idea of installing gate latch pins on each side of the stall entry, with a corresponding "thing- a -ma- jig" in the cedar pole ( a screw with a round hole at the end). You can see how technical I am, I have no idea what it is called but it worked!). He then drilled little holes in the gate latch part so we could put another little "thingy" (can't remember the correct name- my Alzheimer's acting up again) through the hole so the horses couldn't decide to put their heads under the posts and try and lift the poles off the latches ( and yes they really would try that!!). You see we have some very clever horses in the barn that have figured out how to open tack room doors, open freezer lids ( ps the freezer hold the horse feed and that know it).....so we had to preempt escapees!!