Tuesday, December 4, 2012

A Showery Tuesday

(post by Jason) After a very dry November it seems December has started off unseasonably warm and today it's warm and showery. As we move from fall toward winter, showery days will get more common and as the ground gets wet and the days continue to shorten our outdoor projects will slow down. I wouldn't exactly call winter a season of rest...just doing chores takes many hours every day.... but it is usually a season of ordered work minus all the things that have to be done during the growing season.

In my world there is no more soothing an activity than working inside a barn or shed while listening to rain roll off a steel roof. It's a rural right of passage that I appreciate all the more since I know exactly what it feels like to be stuck outside working in crummy weather all day, soaked to the skin no matter what I'm wearing.

One of the rainy day projects Melissa and I have on our radar screen this year is making some heavy duty blanket racks for our main barn. I'm not much of a fan of most commercial blanket racks that you can buy locally or online. They seem to be cheaply made, expensively priced and are nowhere near long enough for our applications. I've toyed in my head with a variety of designs but right now I favour six to ten foot lengths of 3/4 inch iron or steel pipe anchored to the wall at both ends with 12" lengths of chain.

What do you do to amuse yourself during the off season when you can't work outside because it's rainy, damp and cold ?

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Lucky and Lightening


 Silver and George


Calimba, MyLight and Cinnamon


Lily and Traveller


Tony and Baby


Fabrizzio leading the way in followed by Walden, Thor, Noble, Merlin, O'Reilly, Slinky and Snappy


Largo napping with Bergie pawing around behind him preparing to join him


Leo found a scratching post


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the rain on the roof, too. I've always thought it would be lovely to have a house with a metal roof, to hear the rain.

Laura said...

I had a lesson last night in an indoor with a steel roof - it was nice hearing the rain and but staying dry!

In the winter I window shop online - fancy tack, horses, trailers, etc. This year, now that I have my own little property, I daydream about loads of aggregate and building a little shed/lean-to thingy to store equipment in. :-)

EvenSong said...

You're right: just chores can take a bunch of time and energy. In the summer, when I'm out of school, I do all my major projects, and try to do at least a decent job of farming my 14 acres (not as big a responsibility as you guys). Because we haven't had any really COLD nights yet, the ground is still soft enough that I'm racing the impending freeze to get one more fence line of 9 posts replaced! After that I plan to do last spring's cleaning ;-D. I try to do a major tack cleaning day, and I have to finish drawing up the plans for the next addition (the last, I hope) to the barn, as well as a garage/shop project that's been waiting in the winds for a few years...

FD said...

I've worked at a couple of yards with heated rug rails and they made life so much better. Expensive though.

FD said...

I've worked at a couple of yards with heated rug rails, and they make life so much easier. Expensive though.