We are not sure when our new 'lean to' is to be built, probably after lambing and kidding now, but we are very excited about getting the smallholding all sorted as far as buildings and storage is concerned!! We are planning everything with winter at our 'baseline' because we need to ensure that whatever animals we have, we can accommodate them all over the winter AND over an extreme winter such as we have had this year. In our case extreme means very wet but very cold is a consideration too, especially when that means frozen waterpipes and troughs.
At the moment we can house all our stock such that they all have some under cover protection but this winter has highlighted two issues: one being the Woodchip pad getting too wet and the other being that one field shelter is not really big enough for the alpacas to be in 24/7 for more than a few days.
Our plan is to try to work it so that the new lean-to (which will have to have a slightly better name when it becomes a proper barn), the current barn and the double field shelter at the top of the top 3-acre become one big inter-connected housing complex, such that we can keep all the stock under cover in one place and so not have to go into any of the fields at all. Work-in-progress as they say.