Monday morning we started building a quick barn for the livestock. This was to be just enough to keep the worst of the rain and the sun off the animals during the spring and summer, basically a simple pole structure made out of saplings.

It was sixteen feet wide and matched up perfectly with one steel corral panel. We sank the first posts in next to the panel we planned to remove from the corral fence itself. We cut all of the poles to be ten feet in length and built our wall in sections. It took two posts to hold up each end of a section of poles and where sections of the wall connected simply put up three posts. This wasn’t supposed to be an architectural masterwork just a crude shelter for our livestock over the spring and summer.

We did use the same tarp for the roof in an attempt to keep it as dry as possible. We laid one full layer of saplings down and then installed the tarp. We then laid a second row of saplings on top the tarp and perpendicular to the bottom row. I hoped to provide extra layer of structural integrity to the structure while keeping the tarp from billowing. The entire roof was at about a five degree angle to the walls to allow runoff, we secured all of the saplings with strips of sapling bark and called it a success.

We finished it in less than a day with the roof taking the majority of the time, the poles were longer and stouter for the roof and of course building roofs basically sucks however you approach it. Once we had time to build a proper barn this would probably become a hay shed but it was a great short term solution and when it started raining again later that afternoon the livestock took to it quickly. It was crowded but dry.

We threw up a quick roof over the fire pit with only a single layer of poles, it would keep the worst of the rain off the fire and provide a little shade in the summer. After that we sat back to clean our tools and stare at our creations with far to much pride considering the crude efforts that they were.

I spent the evening searching our library and looking at pictures of various palisades, my primary focus was on hiding our technology from curious eyes.

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The first step was to tighten all of the vehicles up, I was pretty sure we’d seen the last of our daily driving and I wanted to put everything up on blocks to preserve the tires. The morning was pretty much spent playing Tetris with two trucks, a horse trailer and the tractor, the tractor ended up being the only vehicle still easily able to move. My suspicion was that the trucks were destined to become donor vehicles pretty quickly. On a positive note they would also provide a secure storage or sleeping location that didn’t leak, we’d need them sooner or later.

We used larger trees for the palisade, we had plenty after our tree cutting expedition down to the river. Since my first priority was to build a screen I didn’t need to build a complete wall this week which meant I could use the small groves of trees around the campsite as part of the screen. After much discussion and dithering it was decided that we didn’t need an active gate so on each end of the compound we built an offset wall section that could be moved into place if necessary to complete the wall. That section was ten feet long and we set it up a good eight feet back from the wall so that it still screened us but there was plenty of room to walk around each end. We weren’t planning to hold off a siege just shield our advanced technology.

Back in my Marine Corps days we would have planned for this and just put up camouflage netting and that sort of stuff was available to the general public. My rig, on the other hand was stocked for hunting and fishing trips not survivalist training. The only reason we had some of the items in our inventory was this was supposed to be a first run to my new ranch and I felt safe loading up; that and the fact that we had a lot of fun spending my newly found wealth. On reflection Matilda had been loading up like she would live on my ranch forever while Sonya had bought very little or anything of long term value. Michelle had intended to visit with me for a few days and brought basically what she and her horse would need for the extent of that visit. In hindsight I was wishing that I had been a fanatical prepper but maybe luck was better than preparation sometimes.

Tetris played and decisions made we started in our palisade. Tuesday afternoon was spent sorting logs and dragging them close to the construction site, the mules were great for this work and we got things in place pretty quickly. By the end of the day we were prepared to start putting up our wall in the morning.

The end of our work day also brought good news, three eggs had hatched and the rest were expected soon. I knew that the duck and goose eggs would take longer but I trusted Matilda to handle that, we wouldn’t be having goose for Christmas this year but perhaps next. Obviously a chicken coop was high on our list of needs, we needed to get those messy birds out of the rig before it suffered permanent and debilitating insult. We had two more mares bred so we were expecting a total of three foals next spring, I fully expected Lunch to take after the nag mares when they came in season which would further increase our herd.

Finally Kordi had taken, this I was fully aware of as I was the one to monitor the dogs and knew she had come into heat. This would create quite a pack of dogs if they both whelped true and would create some consideration in the feeding department. On the other hand I knew there was a US Army Fort up near what was soon to be Omaha and another going up down in Leavenworth, they were always in the market for trained dogs.

I went to sleep wondering if there were opportunities to be had in dealing horses and dogs to the army in the 1820s.