INSIDE STORY THREE

I am sorry there are not pictures today. I have lots to show you yet the hospital won't wait.

Hope you all had a good week. While you’re reading this, I am having my right knee replaced. They scare the bejeebers out of you a couple of weeks before you have the surgery. I bet they told me how bad it was going to hurt at least twenty time.

But I want to talk about something more interesting than my surgery. INSIDE STORY 3

It’s about a Pentagon in the barn lot. One day while reading a copy of Backyard Poultry, yes, I read a chicken magazine, but only for the articles.

The most interesting thing about the book is all of the cool stuff you can buy. I could spend thousands of dollars buying the things I see in farm periodicals.

In this particular issue they had star-plates. A star-plate is a five-sided piece of a steel that is fashioned in such a way a two by four fits into each side.  According to the article, you put an eight-foot board in each point of the star and fit them all together you would end up with a Pentagon eighteen feet tall (honestly, it looked much easier in the pictures).

My, not always practical mind, came up with a better idea. average thinking. If I made the boards ten feet long instead of eight feet like the pattern said, I would have a five-sided building twenty feet high.

So now I had $85 invested in the plates and about $150 in wood. I thought it was a small price to pay to be the only one around with a pentagon in the backyard.

Things went along great until we got ready to attach the top plate. It took everyone we knew and the tractor to get it together.

So now, I had a twenty foot high, ten foot five sized structure with no floor and no roof.  

It didn’t take long to realize this was all a huge mistake. First of all, no one was going to get up there and deck it so we could put on a roof, the star plates set everything on a bias so there was no way to side it.

It was too late to back out.

As luck would have it, there was a storm and we had to replace the roof on the house, the backyard shed, and the gazebo.

I asked the construction crew to deck and put a roof on my folly while they were there. I have never seen so many men stand around with their hats in their hands scratching their heads.

For a couple of years we put tarps around the sides of it and used it for a sheep shelter.

It broke my heart.

There came a time when we had to separate the ram from the ewes. I bet you can figure out why.

The ram was not happy. To show his distaste for the entire set up, he began to butt the side walls with all of his might.

He knocked on side loose and all of my dreams plus the roof were going to hit the ground. They propped it up with a four by four. It was either do something with it or tear it down.

No, I couldn’t bear to have it destroyed.

We decided to turn it into a studio for me.

The pictures are of the construction. I will post more photos when it is all finished. Winter came before the back and the trim was painted.