Jack's Barn Floor Designs

Jack likes to design floor plans for barns.  He's been doing this for a couple of years now.

He's 11.

When he has a few moments to relax, that's what he does.  I would find these floor plans all over the house.  He didn't want me to throw them out...and they started to pile up.

Then he decided that he had to draw them on graph paper.  First we started with the regular size sheets....but the paper wasn't big enough.  So I bought him this bigger size pad of graph paper and he has been quite content...for the last few months.  But tonight I noticed that he has nearly filled it...there are only a few pages left.

I was doing dishes and I heard him ask Terry, "Just how big was that skid steer that we rented from McHale's?"...and Terry told him.  Then I turned around and realized what he was doing.  He needed to know just how big the skid steer was because he was making sure that it would fit down the alley ways of this new barn.

He now tries to draw everything to scale.  He counts the squares on the sheet and makes them into feet and then figures out the sizes of everything.

He knows how wide the gates have to be and which way they would swing to open.

He knows how wide the doorways are.

 

He has figured out just how big each pen would be for the animals.  He has made sheep barns, cattle barns, pig barns and hen houses.  He even uses different coloured ink for the gates and doorways.

He has lambing pens and a place for the scales....

He has a place for the feeders and the water bowls.

He even writes down if the barn has a loft or not.

The details are just incredible.  Blows my mind how he comes up with all these ideas.

But he just loves to farm...that's all he thinks about.

This evening he was complaining about the bottom of his foot.  He said it was sore in one spot.  I had a look and it was a little red.  I asked him if there had been something in his boot....something hard that had been pressing up against it.  He checked his boot but all he found was a ball of hay.  That would probably do it.  So he was soaking his feet....and drawing his barn plans.

Brenda