An Essential Piece of Tooling

So I got my shiny green tractor, although it is a little off putting to have certain unnamed female observers refer to it as 'cute'. Bottom line is that this essential piece of tooling enabled us to do more in three days than we have done in a month. With the help of a couple of laborers we cleared the barn of rubbish and hay, pulled out all of the fences at the back of the big barn, cleared the unsightly burn pile as well as picking up most of the other junk around the site. It wasn't quite so easy getting used to the front loader and the first day was an exercise in frustration as I moved a pile of hay from point A to Point B and back to Point A again while managing to actually pick-up three handfuls in the bucket! (And this might be overly exaggerated as I have a strong suspicion that the wind may have helped some). Meanwhile my partner (on her cute little John Deere riding mower) has trimmed all of the grass around the house. So the property is starting to look a lot better.  Our first before and after pictures are of the barn. Removing the hay will now allow us to 'deconstruct' the structure to salvage the barn wood siding.

Before - Junk piled on top of three to four feet of compacted hay

I have previously wrote about the strong community we have joined and this was further strengthened through our introduction this week to our neighbors across the road at Miracle Farms. This is essentially a boarding school for at-risk children with the goal of building confidence and work ethics in teenagers from 7th grade up by teaching them horse riding and roping skills. We met the director and a number of his staff members and got a tour of the property which stretches over 320 acres of the most beautiful countryside. It was a surprise to learn that they have a well-equipped wood shop and a need for some help in that area. Hmmmm!! Do you think I could help there?
I hope you will take the opportunity to look at their program on their Web site at http://www.childrenatheartministries.org/Page.aspx?pid=366&srcid=586. This is a neat program.

Any program that supports and helps children, especially those that are at risk of falling through the cracks of our society, is worthy of support and I don't care who runs or sponsors the organization. So we are very happy to having this facility on our doorstep and look forward to exploring ways in which we can support the organization.           

After - We hope to be able to re-use these old floor boards in the house