I posted before about how our portable shade shelter blew apart in a recent storm and left us without shade, or shelter.

Ok, that might be a little dramatic.  We have other shelter options, of course.  But this contraption represents a major part of our rotational infrastructure.  Field livestock are hardy (especially our heritage breeds) but they still need some basic protection from the elements. Mr. Fix-It’s design fits that bill for 3 of our 4 seasons, so having it up and running is a priority.

However, there are some challenges to this sort of work for us.  Mainly that Mr. Fix-It is only one person, with two arms, and one tractor.  And I am a klutzy, scatterbrained mother with 3 young children running around her feet, who almost backed over him with the post pounder when the boys got in a fight over a toy.

We had company in town this weekend so Mr. Fix-It was able to get things in order and had some extra hands to help out. He was kind enough to invite me out to help too–you know, by taking pictures, giving advice, that sort of thing.

The real complicating problem is that when it was built piece-by-piece in the beginning, Mr. Fix-It did too good of a job. {smile} Instead of flying apart back into the 100 small pieces we started with, the top simply blew off the base in one gigantic sheet of wood and tin.  Upside down, of course.

Besides being huge, upside down, and heavy, it was unstable. The top is just a giant tin quilt to sit on top of the running gear. The real “support” is the rafters on the running gear base. So it wobbled and shuddered and flopped around.

And there was an interesting point in this production that I wasn’t able to document (because I was too busy biting my nails off and GPSing the nearest hospital) where we had to lift using the forks (see above pictures) and then switch over to no forks to keep the forks from punching right through the tin when we started to push (see below pictures).

In between, we had to park the Ranger underneath to hold it up while Mr. Fix-It took the forks off the tractor.

“Hold” being a completely hopeful but not completely accurate term for what ensued.

But we got it over.

And no one got crushed.

Once it flopped over, it was all hands on deck to wiggle, shove, lift, shift, pull, and otherwise man/tractor/hammer it back into place. We were trying to fit it back to its original pattern because it’s really hard to line up the screws in the tin to the rafters and you end up punching a lot of holes in the roof instead.  It was a challenge.

But at the end of the day, Mr. Fix-It and Roger had us back in the shade business.  And I went back to making cards.

Once I wrestled Annie away from the action.

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