reroofing the turkey townhouse

When you live on a farm with an endless supply of "to do" lists, even in the winter you have to take every possible advantage of breaks in the weather to tackle those jobs.

One of the jobs on our list was to finish renovating the turkey townhouse, which still had some major gaps in the roof and walls which left me worried about both raccoons and cold weather.

The cold weather broke around Christmas so the weekend following found us up on the turkey roof ripping off rotten shingles and the sheeting boards underneath them and replacing them with new plywood and plastic corrugated roofing.

Papa even left some gaps in the sheeting underneath so that the clear plastic corrugated panels would make a skylight up the middle of the roof, brightening the interior of the shelter.

Additional renovations included enlarging the pop-hole door to "turkey-size"...

which came in quite handy a few days later when I went inside the shelter to check their feed and the top outer door latch flipped shut on the outside, locking me inside.

Forcing me to use the escape hatch, i.e. turkey-sized pop-hole door.

See the lighter colored pieces of wood on the window frames?  Papa built those to hold the greenhouse panels in the windows.  They flip out of the way so during the warmer months we can easily remove the greenhouse windows and allow fresh air to blow into the shelter.

Papa is so clever, isn't he?

{Don't tell anyone, but he saw that was how the original windows were held in place and borrowed the idea...}

We even found a bullet lodged in one of the ceiling struts.

If these walls could talk!

Of course we had help, or rather, company, in the form of Gypsy and Karma.

Somehow Karma figured out how to get into the turkey paddock without getting shocked by the fence.

Which troubles me a bit, to be honest.  I don't need any small predators breaching the fence, like anything in the mink family.

But she poses no threat to our livestock, not even the little rabbits in the barn, which she visits often, under my supervision.

It seems she is just incredibly curious and has to be in the "thick of things" at all times.

"Curiosity killed the cat... but satisfaction brought (her) back."

That is her motto.

Which is true - she's been delivered to death's door at least once in her short life, and lived to tell the tale.

Despite all of these distractions, Papa kept his focus on the task at hand, working until past sunset and into the dark to finish the roof.

That Papa, I tell ya, he's something.  I am so grateful for his handy-man skills.

So now, let the snows fall and the winds blow and let varmints try to breach our fences.

I know my turkeys are safe, sound, and at least semi-warm.

Cheers -