Infrastucture

Our farm on the unknown road suffers from a number of deficiencies, apart from obvious problems like no workable address, we have ancient fences, trees on fences, heavy crops of weeds, no power, no telephone,  no sheds, no house, the list of 'nos' is a long one. However that is about to change.  The buzz words today are 'infrastructure' and 'going forward' ...  so - going forward we are investing in infrastructure.

Getting the trees off the fences would classify as going forward, but there is nothing concrete to see once the trees are gone,  just less of what was once there. What we need is to ADD something in our going forwardness. We need something that says 'infrastructure'.

Now I know how the politicians feel, it's all very well to have cups of tea and meet the people tours, but what you need is bang for your bucks - a big announcement followed by a big building program!!

And so the idea of 'The Shed' is born.

The shed is not just a big idea it is an vital one, it fulfills a life essential - shelter,  and most important of all - mans primordial need for A Shed.

Shed Man burst onto the scene  - we have no phone booth or phone so you just have to imagine how it might have looked. This would be no ordinary shed, no pre-fab job here, this would be a proper infrastructure project. Shed Man also discovered that someone, sometime had once started down the infrastructure path before him, there are piles of old corrugated iron, bricks and timber scattered around, all waiting to be recycled.  There are also the remains of an old bed, a sofa, a window and even an ironing board, but that's all way too sophisticated for us.

The shed began life right on the farm as the trees growing up in our road and on our fences, they had to go, but not too far.  The straight ones were felled, the bark skinned off them and lined up in our mini timber yard.   Like all good infrastructure projects this was not going to happen overnight.  After a huge amount of calculation, the next stage began with the digging of the post holes. Several weeks and stages later it was time for the roof to go on. While Shed Man is a great handy man, this was to be his first 3 bay shed.  As the neighbours  came and went offering advice ( picture a movie in fast forward - clouds fast tracking overhead, trucks and utes buzzing back and forward)  Shed Man continued steadily on with his  project.  An old school mate arrived for a visit and became a builders labourer, one of our sons arrived for a day in the country and quickly found himself up a ladder with a sheet of corrugated iron to nail down.  Someone pointed out that a vital component was missing, if the whole structure wasn't braced it could start to list then fall neatly to the ground or worse, blow away. A stop work order  seemed the best option until and the concept of bracing was researched.

Many weeks later and now fully braced, the roof of The Shed was completed.  Its a fine piece of infrastructure -  the only piece for that matter. There it sits, providing shelter for the tractor, for us and as we have discovered, the cows who all like to camp under its roof and scratch against it's poles.  What about some walls you might ask, well the pyramids didn't happen overnight and neither will our shed.