Installment #8: Lemons to Lemonade--The Barn is Finished

Vacation time used up, we were now forced to use Hubby's 34-hour breaks from truck driving to finish the barn.

The reason I call this "Lemons to Lemonade" is that we used the aluminum siding off the ruins of the housetrailer for the siding on our barn. So we'd strip off a little siding and nail it to the barn frame and then go back to the old trailer for some more.

Uh, about that rain! It was back! And this time so was the infamous Central Texas prairie winds--probably around 35 mph not counting the wind gusts. Hubby on the roof, I would push the pieces of sheet metal roofing up to him as best I could from the ground as he tried to hang onto it in the high winds long enough to haul it the rest of the way onto the roof. More than once we had to haul the same piece back up on the roof if the wind gusted and it took off again.

Then, provided if and when Hubby could get the sheet metal in place, I would attempt to hang onto one corner of it from a second ladder as Hubby kneeled on top of it and tried to nail part of it down to keep it in place. I also attempted to nail down my end whenever I didn't need both hands, elbows and body weight to keep it down in the wind.

More than once, my war cry was "I'm losing it!!!!" and Hubby would belly-flop on top of the sheet metal piece to keep the wind gust from carrying it off. If it hadn't been so serious, I think I would have fallen off my ladder laughing. You have to understand, Hubby was nicknamed "Q-tip" by some of the locals here because his body forms a long rail-thin connection between his white hair and his white tennis shoes he was famous for wearing in those days. So here was Hubby, all 120 pounds of him, belly-flopping on the sheet metal to keep it down. I had visions of him and it taking off across Limestone County like Aladdin and His Magic Carpet.

Luckily, his efforts worked and he stayed on the roof!

And then we worked in a mist of rain most of the time, just enough to make the sheet metal slick. Wonderful!

Well, we are both still here, so obviously we survived the high winds, and the slick, wet and flying sheet metal.

Thank goodness for small favors, finishing the three stalls inside was rather uneventful. The big barn allowed us to give our three horses 11x22' stalls and a 10-foot run-in the length of the barn in front. I found at my previous stable a big long stall is generally easier to clean than your average 10x10 or square stall. The horses tend to use the back part as a "potty pan". As long as the stalls are diligently cleaned daily, it's easier to clean up than poop that's been ground in under a horse that has no other place to get out of his own dung.

Anyway, barn complete! Horses happy! At least now on our treeless 16 acres, the horses had a place to get away from the hot sun and the bad weather. Uh...well...for now...

Stay tuned!