Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement: Two Years Ago

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Two Years Ago

It has now been two years since Jason's epic fail (in my opinion of course) at building the goat house. Any visitors to our farm will note that all of the barns and run-in sheds look alike. Everything is white with a red roof. All of the run-in sheds have cupolas on them. Jason did not want the cupolas, he thought they were too expensive. I wanted the cupolas. We have a lot of cupolas. Enough said on that topic. Apparently he decided to make his opinion known by building a goat sized run-in shed that was brown. It also has black shingles and no cupola. It does not fit in with the rest of our farm. Apparently I am the only one that cares.

Below is the post I wrote on the topic almost exactly two years ago. I still refer to it as my conversation with myself. I still remind Jason that the goat shed is all wrong. He still hasn't done anything about it.

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(post written October 2013)The World's Cutest Fainting Goats have been keeping up busy lately. In all of our spare time (hahahaha) we built them theirghetto fence and moved them to the farm. As I mentioned in the post where we described their moving day, Mina was beside herself when she realized the only shelter they had in their paddock with the ghetto fence was a couple of dogloos. We promised Mina that we would rectify this unfortunate situation as quickly as possible. True to our word we've been working on that the last few days in fits and starts. Mina definitely does not grasp this concept of a "real job" and I'm sure is wondering why we haven't worked non-stop on building her some suitable housing.

Jason has been busy . . .

He's measured . . .

. . . he's made sure things were level . . .

. . . he's chainsawed . . .

. . . he's contemplated . . .

. . . he's used the nail gun . . .

. . . he's put on the joist hangers . . .

. . . and he's currently in the process of shingling the roof.

I attempted to have a conversation with Jason today about non-structural things in regards to the goat housing. Jason is all concerned about the structural engineering but looks matter too right? It all started when I saw he had bought black shingles instead of red shingles.

Me: You bought black shingles?

Jason: Yes. So?

Me: This won't match the other run-ins and barns. They all have red roofs, now this one is going to have a black roof. Shouldn't we take these back and get red shingles?

Jason: silence

Me: Is there going to be a cupola on the roof like the other run-in sheds?

Jason: silence

Me: But all of the horse run-in sheds have cupolas.

Jason: silence

Me: We'll at least put a weathervane on the roof, right?

Jason: silence

Me: We're going to paint it white, right? Because all of the horse run-in sheds are white.

Jason: silence

Me: I feel like I'm talking to myself.

Jason: silence

Me: Well, this conversation has been very productive. I feel like we settled a lot of things.

Jason: silence

By putting my intuition at work what I have interpreted from this conversation is the black shingles won't be replaced with red, there will be no cupola, probably not even a weathervane, and Jason isn't too keen on painting the goat house white. But it is possible that I have completely misinterpreted Jason's responses. I guess I will wait with baited breath to see the final product. Although it will undoubtedly be structurally sound, I'm thinking that as far as aesthetics go it will pair up nicely with the ghetto fence.

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The follow up to this epic failure at building the goat shed was brought to us by Mina, one of the World's Cutest Fainting Goats. This post was also written two years ago.

(written in October 2013) You might recall that Jason was hastening to build the goats their new run-in shed because Mina absolutely did not approve of the fact that her new paddock had only a couple of dogloos for shelter. Mina was not interested in taking shelter in a dogloo. Mina the Czarina definitely felt she was above using a dogloo.

The morning after Jason completed the non-white, black-shingled, non cupola bearing goat run-in shed he called me. He was feeding horses by the goat paddock and I was feeding horses at the front of the farm. I answered the phone and Jason said "guess where Mina is right now."

I replied "in her brand new run-in shed?"

There was silence for a moment and then Jason said in a very not-amused voice "she's in the dogloo."

I will admit I almost died laughing at that point. There were so many different ways I could say I told you so that I couldn't even pick one.

Since that day Mina has lowered herself to use the aesthetically mis-matched goat run-in shed. However I am sure it wears on her pride every day that the horses have prettier sheds than she does. Undoubtedly she is counting down the days until Jason decides to do renovate and remodel. I haven't had the heart to tell her that she will probably be waiting for a long, long time. (Postscript - and we now know it has been two years with no renovations in sight.)

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Happy and Murphy