The Old Goat Shed: Roof It Or Lose It

Right about the time the new saw blades came in for the sawmill, we were faced with another decision to make. The tarp on the goat shed was rather in tatters, so Dan took it off. He came in to report that the roof was in worse shape than we remembered and that if we didn’t do something about it we’d soon lose the building.

Covering the roof of this building was our very first outdoor homestead project. It was one of two that were built around the same time as our house, about 90 years ago. We wanted to turn half of it into a chicken coop, and the other half into a goat stall. The roof at the time had several layers on it but had started to leak. In discussing options we decided to simply tarp it for the time being. That was six years ago and the roof was long overdue for some help.

Options? We could let it go, which didn’t sit well with either of us. We could tarp it again, but to be honest, we are rather tired of looking at tarps all over the place. They are on that outbuilding, cover the hay hut,

and serve as walls on the carport. They’re okay for a season or two, but once they start to shred, there are bits and ribbons of poly-whatever they’re made of all over the place. The other option was to put a proper roof on it.

More discussion. Should we just re-roof the existing part or do something more? I dug out one of our old goat barn plans to reconsider – Goat Barn Plan #5. That idea was to simply add another half to the shed to create a small gable barn.

Dan decided to expand it a bit, coming out about five feet on the front and adding about four feet on the milking room side. Here’s how it’s coming along.

The only glitch we’ve had was in moving the hay hut. It used to be right in front of the goat shed, but it needed to be moved to work on the building. The problem was that Mama Duck was still under there. This is the same Mama Duck that had snakes getting her eggs ( see “No Hope For Ducklings?“). Since we couldn’t actually see the nest, we had no idea whether or not she still had eggs. But the hay hut was in the way so it had to be moved. What happened after that is quite a story. I’ll tell you all about it next time.