This post is part of a monthly series, Then & Now, that uses photos to show the development and changes taking place on the farm.
January 2020
We made an offer, considerably below asking price, on what would become Magpie Hollow Farm in January of 2020. It was quickly accepted, most likely because others who came to view the property saw a scene like this - washed out road, rotting buildings, junk everywhere, overgrowth caused by neglect - and said “Nope!”
We said, “This is our kind of mess!”
This shed was nearly a total loss. The walls were chewed off by animals and it was filled with manure, old tools, and other junk. All kinds of stuff, including fencing, tools, household items, trash, bags of cement left in the rain, wire, hose, etc., were strewn in the pasture, half buried, and entangled with vegetation. We spent a lot of time over the past couple of years pulling stuff out of the ground to make it safe to run equipment (e.g., mowers) and to avoid injury for the animals.
Here’s an anecdote that illustrates a lot of what rehabbing the property has entailed: In a clot of weeds and junk I found two grills - one gas, one charcoal. They were in decent shape and I figured with a little tinkering and elbow grease could be brought back to life.
When I opened the lid of the gas grill I found a hornets’ nest!
First lesson of Magpie Hollow Farm: there’s a lot of junk around and there’s some good stuff too. But you’ll have to work for the good stuff and you very well might get stung, bitten, cut, scratched, bruised, or worse in the process.
January 2021
The shed pictured above was brought back from the brink of certain death and refurbished into a barn for small ruminants. We built a hay shelter from poplar half-rounds we got for free from a local timber framer.
Junk/weed piles have been consolidated to a few places, such as in front of the “meth trailer” as shown.
The other shed, which was in similar condition, was refurbished into a decent tool shed.
What we call the hunter’s shack is the two-segment tan colored building with the rusty tin roof pictured here between the two blue sheds. The foremost segment was full of all kinds of junk and part of the roof was starting to cave in. This let in rain, and in one corner the floor and walls were rotting away. The rear segment of the shack (not visible in the photo below) was full of manure as the previous owner had used it to house animals (goats and alpacas we think).
By January 2021 we had amassed a small herd of sheep and goats along with these two guardian donkeys Theo (left) and Milli (right). We built a lean-to on the back of the goat shed to give them a little protection from the weather…
…which was needed that month since we had our first big snow storm.
January 2022
We had a lesser snowstorm in January 2022. The differences in the photos above and below are subtle:
the trailer front porch and rear deck were disassembled for reclaimed lumber
the front segment of the hunter’s shack was disassembled for reclaimed lumber
the pig shelter is just barely visible in the lower photo
Theo and the gang appreciate the shelter in the upper pasture on days like this.
The pigs employ the cuddle-puddle strategy to beat the cold.
The snow stuck around for about a week, but the sheep were fine. The goats mostly hid in the shed until the weather warmed up.
Here’s Ginny sitting in our “lumber yard” where the front segment of the hunter’s shack used to be.
Another view of the “lumber yard,” and the rear section of the hunter’s shack during retrofit into a barn for mama sheep and goats to be with their babies. All the poo we scraped out of the shack is shown piled up in the dooryard.
Pens or “jugs” inside the cleaned out and gutted barn for mamas and babies. I built these from wood we reclaimed from taking down the other segment of the hunter’s shack.
The barn was “ready” (or, “ready enough”) none too soon as Clarice had her buck on January 13, just a couple of days before the snowstorm shown above hit. We named him Jalebi.
Jalebi fresh out the womb yo, and Milli comes over to inspect.
One week later Alabama has her boys, which we named Gulab (right) and Jamun (left).
Gulab was the runt, and had an issue that’s common in goats - his leg tendons weren’t completely stretched out. He had trouble walking and nursing and keeping warm enough, so we brought him inside for a couple nights and he slept on a heating pad in the bathtub. Rachael got up every few hours to bottle feed him. Then he was fine so we put him back out with his momma and brother.
I think most people would have seen the hunter’s shack, in the condition that it was in, as a total loss to be torn down - bulldozed into a pile and set on fire. It was a lot of work, but the front segment that we took apart yielded probably $2,000-$3,000 worth of lumber at today’s exorbitant prices. I spent much of the Christmas holiday scraping dried manure out of the rear segment and blowing brown boogers. But now we’ve got another massive compost pile along with a clean, warm, dry, and safe place for new lil’ critters and their mamas.
Totally worth it.