Markou Ranch: New Shed on the Way

Friday, July 15, 2011

New Shed on the Way

This is what the shed looks like.

For my birthday I bought myself a new shed from Costco. It's not the shed I really wanted--the huge red "barn" Tuff Shed at Home Depot, but hey, you can't always get what you want. I have to work with a budget here. It's been 14 days since I got my shed and lugged it off the bed of my truck, dropping its two massive boxes on the earth a few feet from where I want it assembled. Why the long wait? Did I mention it's Tucson and it's BURNING HOT here?

So hot that last night I mulched three quarters of the garden at 11pm by battery operated lantern and moonlight. It's simply too hot to do things like that when the sun is up. Maybe I'm a vampire gardener.

But, back to the shed. No, it's not assembled...yet. But my mini-farmers and I went to Home Depot late last night before heading out to our ranch campground and got 72 concrete pavers for the shed base. This morning before we left we played a little game of Tetris or more like Farmville plotting and laid out the base. Farmer G snapped pictures and it only took the four of us about twenty minutes to finish. It's not perfect, but it will do just fine.

Unloading each paver one by one.

I wanted the shed primarily for hay storage. When we first started we only had four dwarf goats and could get by on one bale a week. Two if I didn't want to go to the feed store so much. But then we got the Boer mixes, the sheep, the 4-H goats and well, it's about three to four bales a week now. I had built a small hay stoarge area out of used pallets and a corrugated roof, but we outgrew that!

I'd also like a better place to store my itty bitty generator, harvesting buckets, chicken feed, goat grain and whatnot. A utility table would be nice. A place to keep seeds that haven't made their way into the rows yet. A place to keep my tools instead of leaned up against the compost bin.

Hmm, I hope this shed will be big enough!