The final product. "The sheep shed"

Well, after many hours of hard work and organization, the new shelter is complete. We are all very confident that the sheep will enjoy their much needed new sleeping quarters. =)
One final inspection from our chief inspector (Stella Dorothy) and we are good to go!


It was a pleasure to work with such a grateful and dedicated group of students and staff at Orange High School. I hope that the community can see the value that this program provides for our leaders of tomorrow.

a special THANK YOU to:
The Home Depot, and its many employees who helped to get us as much material as possible.
Christian Building Materials
Nelson Frappier
Alberto Gomez 

Who knows... we may be back to help some more in the spring.. stay tuned!!

The OLD

The NEW

The strength of many hands

This week we have enlisted the help of all of the farm students. With 20 sheets of plywood to primer, THEN PAINT, BOTH SIDES, it would have taken Alberto and I three days to do each step ourselves. With the help of about 10-12 students, over the course of 3 days, we had all of the wood primer’ed, painted, and we started to put the roof on “el casa de sheep-n-goats.”

The roof is coming along great this week. Alberto has done a fine job with the shingles, rafters, and all of the joist hardware.

The animals have grown curious over this new formation taking shape in their pasture. At the end of each day, the students or Mrs. Williams let them roam around and sniff out their updated abode.

On 1/12, another one of the sheep gave birth to a single cute black and white lamb. Super cute!

A couple more days and the sheep, and their newborns will be moving in to their new upgraded spacious condominium.

Frank Frappier- 1/14/11

Foundation is set, Posts are in, Picnic on the Farm

Inspector Stella on the job!

Alberto, Brian, and Nelson working on the plan.

Construction starts  early.. that’s what I remember from my younger days on my dad's job sites. This was no exception. 7am we were at Home Depot in Orange to pick up the rented Auger(yes that is Auger). This is a large drill made to drill large holes in the dirt, where you pour concrete to “cement” the 4x4 posts on a building.

Over to the High School and of course the students were there already.. (on a Saturday at 7 am). Why wouldn’t they be? (sarcasm inserted here)

-12 holes dug,

-15 bags of concrete mixed

-12 4 x 4’s  put in the ground.

(it really took all day, but we’ll spare you the boring construction details. =)

The fun part though, was that we had goats and sheep inspecting our work along the way. Since we were in the pasture, we had “visitors” every so often to see how we were doing.

The sheep were looking for a way to help. 

In fact, one of the sheep delivered Twins last night and we were able to see the newborn lambs in the pen win their mother… really cool!

My wife Leah came by with our Daughter Stella Dorothy, and we had a nice picnic on the farm, and introduced Stella D. to a bunch of the animals. That was my favorite part of the project so far!  My wife is in love with Curly, the Scottish steer.

Curley. 

Frank Frappier- 1/8/11

Dad’s persistence pays off

Well, after about four weeks, 8 letters, and 16 trips to local stores by my dad (Nelson Frappier), the bulk of the necessary building supplies have been acquired and we are ready to start building.

It turns out that Lumber, and Plywood is “not so cheap”.  Three different Home Depot’s gave about $250 each in building materials, and Christian Building Materials, gave us $600 worth of roofing supplies.

Today we started bringing all of the supplies over to the school and meeting the Farmhands who would be helping us with some of the labor.

These students, LET ME TELL YOU,  are dedicated to their animals!! They are constantly there at the farm. Feeding, washing, prepping, exercising etc… it is A LOT of work to raise animals properly. Each of these students are assigned an animal at the beginning of the year, and it is their responsibility (and privilege) to raise the animals in a proper environment, up until they bring them to the county fair in July. At this time the animals are sold off to the highest bidder which teaches the students even more about the process of raising, marketing, and selling of livestock. 

The kids even name their prized animals. One of the pigs name is “piggy smalls”. They have an adorable Scottish steer who’s name is curly.

This responsibility does not come cheap. Each of these students is responsible for raising their own funds necessary in order to :house, feed, and maintain their respective animal all the way from animal assignment, up until the sale at the county fair.  For example, a steer would cost approximately $3000 to the student if they wanted to raise a steer through the year and sell it at the fair. Alternatively, a sheep would cost approximately $600  to maintain until the fair. Again, more lessons for the students about responsibility and finances involved. It is no wonder that they are THERE ALL THE TIME!

Back to the project…. Now we have the materials. It’s time to get dirty and start building!

Frank Frappier 1/5/11