I Did It My Way

Yes­ter­day morn­ing I woke up and it was pour­ing rain out­side. This dis­tressed me great­ly.

I now have three and a half turkeys in amongst my menagerie. Ter­rance and his two love­ly wives, Thel­ma and Louise and lit­tle baby turkey There­sa.

In my “pen” I have two shel­ters from the rain for the ani­mals but the prob­lem was my turkeys would­n’t fit under it. I need to have them pro­tect­ed from the ele­ments.

Now Glen is bet­ter, much bet­ter (blog com­ing) but he is still not in shape to be haul­ing roof sheet­ing around and bang­ing nails in so I decid­ed to cre­ate a spe­cial project and to build the Turkey shel­ter myself with some help from my junior appren­tices.

Only one prob­lem there, I have nev­er real­ly “built” any­thing in my life and the only time I have real­ly banged nails in is to put pic­ture hooks up on my walls to hang paint­ings on. Hmm big project indeed.

I wan­dered up to the “bits” shed to see what mate­ri­als were lying around that I could use on my mis­sion and found some nice planks and sup­port poles along with enough roof sheet­ing for the roof and side.

So with every­one look­ing on rather curi­ous­ly (espe­cial­ly the goats) I start­ed gath­er­ing my bits and pieces and drag­ging them down to stack out­side the work­shop.

I then spent half an hour arrang­ing the bits where I want­ed them and final­ly I was ready to begin. Glen passed me the ham­mer and nails out with a fun­ny look on his face as he peered at my assem­bled pieces. He decid­ed to watch as I start­ed to join my bits togeth­er. So with an audi­ence of one Ear­ly­dog, Five Chil­dren, One hus­band and four goats, I set about my task.

I asked Glen to hold a cou­ple of bits while i nailed it togeth­er and he still had this rather weird look on his face. I shrugged and kept work­ing. Final­ly I had two bits of frame com­plet­ed.

Glen still had the weird look on his face as he walked back inside to fin­ish what he had been doing and I then enlist­ed the chil­dren to help me car­ry my new­ly assem­bled frame down to the chick­en coop. We all marched down the yard with our “Bits” to the sur­prise of my curi­ous crit­ters who did­n’t know what the heck was going on.

The kids held my two bits up which they sooned real­ized were the sides of my new frame, as I ham­mered in the cross sup­ports. Halfway through doing this my son turned to me and said.. ahh­hh now i see what your doing mum, it looks great and you had to build it in here because we would­n’t have got it through the door oth­er­wise. Yes Some­times my son has my log­ic… some­times.….

To my cred­it I only ham­mered one of my fin­gers once dur­ing the whole exer­cise and it was­n’t long before I stood back and sur­veyed my work. At this point the chil­dren bought me down the roof sheet­ing from the “bits” shed which i sooned banged up in place on the top and back of the shel­ter as a wind break.

Then we moved the shel­ter over to uti­lize the tem­po­rary wind breaks I had already put in the pen for the ani­mals.

We all stood back and admired the new shel­ter. Ter­rance was first to inves­ti­gate his new shel­ter. He stood under it look­ing quite pleased. I had made the cross beams so that the chick­ens would be able to roost on them at night with plen­ty of room for the turkey fam­i­ly to sleep out of the ele­ments.

Of course as I was build­ing the pen it stopped rain­ing and the skies cleared. Prob­a­bly won’t get any­more rain for a month but when we do.. my turkeys will be ready for it.

I called out to Glen to come down and see the fin­ished prod­uct. I watched as he walked down the yard and looked at my new shel­ter. Sud­den­ly a big smile broke out on his face. “That looks great” he said.

I near­ly burst with hap­pi­ness. I was so proud of myself. I had pic­tured some­thing in my head and then built it out of scraps. The best thing was..it worked. It was stur­dy and strong and unlike­ly to fall apart so eas­i­ly.

Glen then went on and said “when I was up hold­ing it for you, i had no clue as to what the heck you were doing but now I see and you did great. They won’t get wet any­more”.

I hugged him and said oh well..it’s a big crooked.

He laughed at me and said, “its a chook pen, its not sup­posed to look per­fect, just be prac­ti­cal and that one is prac­ti­cal. You did a fan­tas­tic job”.

I stuck my puny chest out and beamed. I was so hap­py with myself and had a real sense of accom­plish­ment and achieve­ment. I did it myself. From my plans in my head to build­ing it myself.. and the best thing..it worked and will work for what it was designed for, for a long time.

I am still all proud like.. every­time I wan­der down to the pen and see a ban­tam chick­en on my new shel­ter roof, or a line up of hans perched on the cross beams… and the best reward i got was when i walked down to the pen after dark to check on the ani­mals to find Thel­ma sit­ting under the new shel­ter with baby There­sa peep­ing out from under­neath her wing where she was sleep­ing.

I did it myself.. my plans, my ideas and my own hands that bought it to fruition.… such a tiny thing.. to build a rag­gy old turkey shel­ter.. but a spe­cial event in my life indeed.….

I am going to tack­le the pig pen next and build them a pen, as my pigs.… well they are pigs… and because they are such pigs they steal all the chick­en’s rations so they need a pen of their own.

Even­tu­al­ly i want to build sep­a­rate pens for all my dif­fer­ent ani­mals.… Rome was­n’t built in a day indeed.. but I’ll get there.…..It’s not much..it pro­l­ly looks real­ly sim­ple and ugly

but I built it and it did­n’t cost a cent 🙂

So when have you stepped out of your com­fort zone and done and acheived some­thing total­ly dif­fer­ent and new?

Did you feel pride in your suc­cess?

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