The last week’s weather has put us back into the deep freeze, halting building construction again.

We believe that at the current rate we’ll be well into spring before the building is completed, and without thinking too much about it we were planning on having the concrete slab poured after it started warming up, saving us the money to heat the building in preparation for the concrete work.

However, someone at work reminded me that there is a restriction on trucks hauling heavy loads on the roads in the spring starting at the “first significant thaw” until all the frost is out of the ground.  Historically it looks like those restrictions have started in early March until mid May.

They can still haul the concrete during the road restriction period, but they will have to bring more smaller loads, which once again will cost us more.  It we want to avoid the hauling restrictions we’d have to wait until mid May to pour the slab.

So it looks like one way or the other it’s probably going to cost us more than we planned to put in the concrete slab.  We could have poured in the middle of winter, and spent extra money to heat the building, or we can wait for warmer weather and save money on heating the building but pay extra for the additional truckloads of smaller loads of concrete.

To avoid the extra expense completely would mean waiting until mid May to pour the slab, and although that’s still a possibility, we didn’t really want to wait that long.

I was talking to Rob about how the metal roofing fit together and I took some photos of the roof steel to ease explanation.

The following photo shows the bottom rib and tab of one of the steel panel with the slots for the screws on the left.  The screws end up hidden beneath the next panel.  (The sheets are stacked back to back alternately, so you can also see the rib for the other side of the panel on the panel inverted beneath the top one.)

Here’s the other side of the panel.  The lip on the rib on the right of the following photo locks onto the channel of the rib above, and the panel thus covers the screws of the previous panel.

It’s not a very good picture with the frost/snow on the panels, but here’s some scrap sections assembled that gives a general idea of how the panels fit together.

On the farm front, we discovered last week that one of our cows had a calf during our mini thaw.  I’m well past thinking this sort of timing is just a coincidence now, since it’s not the first time I’ve noted that our cows have calved during a warm spell in the middle of winter.

The calf was a healthy male, and although we were concerned about whether or not he would survive the bitter cold streak of this week, so far he’s still doing fine.  We’ve had seemingly healthy calves die however within the first few weeks after being born in the winter, so he has another week or so before we can be reassured he’ll likely survive in the cold.

There’s still a lot of winter left for him to make it through though.

Unfortunately for him, the fact that he’s a male means he’s destined to be food for the table in a few years.  The male calves get castrated (turning them from bulls into steers).  We usually band them (I won’t get into the details of that – you can read about the process here if you prefer) although most ranchers perform the process surgically.

Because we don’t have chutes or any way to handle the bigger cattle safely they have to be banded early when they’re small enough to handle; something that we haven’t always gotten to in a timely manner in the past.  We have one or two other younger bulls that didn’t get banded when they were small and still need to be castrated before they get big enough to try to breed the cows.

I thought about banding the new calf right away as he let me walk right up to him, but don’t want to stress him during the cold weather.  I’ll wait a week or two.

Since the Degrosses are old ranch-hands they’ve offered to help us castrate the older bulls, including trying to get the big bull that’s been doing all the breeding into a trailer to be sold.

But all that will have to wait for some at least slightly warmer weather regardless.

Our vet, Dr. Davison, came out Thursday to tend to a sick goat and took a look at our horse, Duchess, as well.  Since Kim was at the dog grooming shop she sent Lynn in her stead to meet the vet and brave the cold.

The vet thought Duchess was doing quite well, and although she’s still treating her injured hoof gingerly, he thinks we can get her out to pasture soon so that she starts using it more.

However, with all the ice that’s around from the mini-thaw and rain of a few weeks ago we think it’s best if we leave her in the barn stall for a while longer, until there is a lot less ice around.

Hope seems to have recovered fine and we’re now starting to rest easier assuming that there won’t be any more problems with any of the animals related to the shootings last fall.

Filed under: Building Construction 2009-10, Farm, Home Projects on January 30th, 2010