A New Sheep Shelter

The new sheep shelter in the Castañarina farm finished today.

Our farm is divided up into different plots of land and when the sheep are grazing we like them to be able to have access to shelter from these different plots in case of bad weather. Our original stable is in the middle of the apple orchard and the sheep have direct access to this stable from six of the farm plots. However when we brought the Castañarina farm in 2003 the sheep had no shelter whilst grazing this farm as it is too far from the stable.

To reduce the labour input for maintaining the rocky pasture land in Castañarina, we considered it necessary to have the sheep grazing here for a couple of months over the winter period. To allow the sheep to have access to shelter whilst grazing this farm in the winter we decided to build a sheep shelter.

There are various old stone walls in the Castañarina and we thought it would be good to use these old walls as part of the sheep shelter. We also wanted to use materials we had available on the farm as much as possible. This reflects our desire to start incorporating more permaculture principles on the farm.

We finished building this new sheep shelter today and the photos beneath show the building process.

The sheep shelter site before we started work, with parts of the original stone wall somewhat overgrown with vegetation.

The site now cleared and beginning to restore the stone walls.

One of the restored walls and the first roof beam .

All the Eucalyptus beams (cut from the farm) positioned on the stone walls.

Roofing in place, made from old pallets we had collected over time.

The pallets covered with plastic and secured with sheep wire and stones.

Front view of the shelter.

Room with a view, looking from inside the shelter out. No problems with over booking now!