Preparing the barn

Five days until DD-Day (Donkey Delivery Day) and there's so much to do!

The barn really needed to be cleaned up, swept out, the hay storage area raked of old stuff and prepped for new, stalls needed to be cleaned and filled with new pellet bedding, gates needed securing, etc.

First things first, though. Water is a necessity, but we hadn't been able to figure out how to turn the barn water back on after it had been shut off for the winter. We had been given rather conflicting instructions from the previous owner that had us walking in circles, but, finally, after convincing myself that it was entirely possible that a water valve COULD be right next to a major electrical box, I took a deep breath, reached my hand into some sketchy looking insulation, and exposed a yellow lever!

This bad boy needed merely to be twisted and....

Voila! Water!

Feeling ever so clever, I moved on to the barn entry:

This gate can be pushed inward into the pasture or pulled outward toward the barn wall:

but there was no way to secure it against the barn wall to keep it from swinging back toward the pasture and allowing donkeys past it and into the driveway.

So, I drilled a hole, inserted an eye hook into the wall and now the gate can be secured with a clasp:

Roxy, my pup, did her part in the overall barn preparation by keeping a vigilant watch from this box:

Next, I tackled the hay storage area. It has had very old hay, dried leaves, unused pallets, and miscellaneous barn junk stored there for some time now:

I'm not sure if you can tell the difference in this picture, but I raked it out thoroughly, got rid of some junk and cut the pallets in half to store the new hay on. It's all ready for new grass hay now:

At the end of the afternoon, while I was sweeping out the barn...

I heard this high pitched chirping and thought it was a nest of mice in the walls. Walking around, the noises led me to the barn attic. Imagine my surprise when I found my head being "buzzed" by small, silent, flying things. Roxy and I quickly retreated to the stairs where we could then discern their shadows as they flew around. I couldn't see them well at all, so I just started taking flash pictures. This is what I got:

Can you see the little brown flying thing to the left of the blue tarp?

Now you can see it:

Here's a close-up of that last shot. He's smiling for the camera: