I wasn’t planning a barn makeover. Don’t get me wrong, it was desperately needed and horrifically overdue, it just wasn’t on the list. Blame the back paddock yielding 51 bales of pretty awesome looking hay; just like that, the space we’d earmarked for this years hay storage became woefully inadequate and getting it out of the paddock suddenly rocketed to number one priority.

After spending a rather sweaty hour of dragging the bales into piles of five (and one of six) to make loading the ute easier and faster once everyone was on deck, I stood in front of the barn and pondered.

We’ve done cursory tidy-ups in the past but, just like every kitchen has “the drawer” (you know, the one filled with plastic battery compartment covers, charger cords that might belong to something, batteries that may have some life left, pre-decimal coins, hairy blobs of blutak…my grandparents one used to have old radio valves), the barn is where everything we don’t know where to put gets put – and it was crammed full.

First up, protection! Regular readers will be aware of my fear (I’m not to proud to call it that) of rodents in general and rats in particular. Even writing the word, rats, gives me the heebie jeebies. So I donned my thickest set of gardening gloves, tucked my jean legs into my socks, rolled down my sleeves and picked a corner to start in; north-west, if you’re interested. Oh! The things I found – not one of them a rodent, dead or alive – that I had forgotten we had, or knew we had somewhere but maybe, could be, we threw it out. Slowly but surely I made piles: fencing paraphernalia, offcuts of wood to good to be out in the weather, handy things from the The Bean Counter’s and Farmer’s works that were “too good to throw out” because “they may come in handy”, the bikes, a heap of ramshackle roofing iron, plumbing supplies…it was a veritable treasure trove!

By the time the off-Homestead workers had arrived, donned their farm gear, and headed off for the back paddock, a decent area had been cleared, raked, and had pallets laid to keep the hay off the ground.

At the end of another hours work the next day, we had a cute little nook for the mower, drop saw, and wheelbarrow.

I uncovered the bikes in an embarrassingly sorry state; at the previous homestead, they were central to our lives but not everything fits when you relocate and the open road we live on made cycling just a little too scary. Maybe we’ll toughen up again one day.

There’s still a little bit of tidying left to do but, in the way of summer, there’s been several other number one priorities in the meantime: a couple of cases of flystrike amongst the sheep (all thankfully sorted), unprecedented, seemingly overnight, thistle growth to be attacked, emergency coddling of an inexplicably unwell goat kid, lawns to be kept short now we’re officially in fire season, potatoes to be dug, beans to be frozen, fruit to be saved from the birds eager beaks… Finishing the barn cleaning now been relegated to odd moments between priorities. At least everything is now accessible and easy to grab.

“Not being able to get to it,” is no longer an excuse.

Okay, off to the next priority (blogging has now been ticked off); the poor old apple tree is nearly lying on the ground having broken it’s moorings.

One day, getting decent photos of our everyday may make it to top priority…

but I’m not betting the farm on it.