Thursday, October 21

Savannah Rocks!

Our daughter is a wonderful blend of opposites.
She is feminine, but no one would call her girly.
She is soft hearted and sweet, but tough as nails and gutsy.
She can be timid in some situation and then the bravest person I know in others.
I not only love her dearly... but I really like her too!

She is currently finishing the last couple projects for her Personal Progress Program.
This is a very important Program for her and she will be finished no later than years end.

One of her projects was to pick a personal space and organize it and determine what would make the space function more efficiently and then budget/shop for/ and transform the space.  Each of her projects require a minimum of 10 hours to complete.  This project was well over 10 hours logged but she is thrilled with the final results.

Savannah's primary chores consist of taking care of the animals.
The current count is 3 horses, 2 donkeys, 4 goats, 2 cats, 1 puppy, and 16 chickens.
So it was no surprise to me that she chose to organize the 'tack' room in the new barn.
 She graphed the 6x12' space and listed all the functions and storage that needed to take place in the cramped quarters. No floor space, wall space, or even rafters were left unused.
 No.1... she needed a hay loft.  We have found that purchasing hay in bales works best for us and we have less waste.  But we buy in bulk and we needed storage.  We could only go up for that kind of storage so she and her dad made this loft.  Complete with a ladder that hooks safely onto the loft and then can be hung on the wall out of the way when she is not using it.
 Shelves and hooks galore!
 Milking station for the goats.
 Also notice the 'out of the way' storage of hay loft ladder... that ladder would take up much needed real estate if this alternative had not been used.
 This is the best little invention!
She needed a safe, contained area for baby goats after they are born.
We were stumped on this because we did not have floor space to devote to a goat 'playpen'.  Especially because this is only needed for a few months out of the year when the goats are birthing.
 So the ingenious resolution was to have swinging gates that could be opened against the walls and hooked into place and completely out of the way for the majority of the time.
Yet could be pulled out and latched together and create a goat pen when the 'kids' are small and need to be contained and safe.  Perfect solution!
 Add in storage for tools, like shovels and pitch forks, and containers for all the different feeds...
Job well done!
 Huge project.  Tons of time, tons of forethought, tons of power tools!
The only thing left on Savannah's tack room wishlist is a saddle and blanket rack.
She has a few babysitting jobs lined up so those will be on order and hung real soon.
Bravo Sweet Girl!  You never cease to amaze me!

3 comments:

Cari said...

I have yet to trek back there and really look at the barn. Only seen it from the seat of a 4-wheeler. I am really going to have to go check all of this out. Amazing.

Kelli @ WhimsiKel said...

That is incredible! Her secret's out now; I'll tell her she can organize our kitchen while she's here...

Karen said...

Yup. She rocks.