Barn Cleaning

Yesterday was clear and much warmer than it has been. It is January but there was something spring-like in the day. I wanted to be outside, so after work I ditched the gym and decided I would get my excercise by cleaning out the barn and hen house.
It was about 3:00 and some of the sheltered hollow where the barn lies was already in shade. A few of the chickens had gone to roost already, but they came down when I filled the feeders and scattered the salad scraps I had for them.
Over the last couple of months, my chickens have largely abandoned the hen house in favor of the barn rafters. Maybe they feel safer there. I don't know. But what I do know is that it makes an awful mess on things below and needs to be stopped. I plotted how to achieve that while I went about my work.
First the barn. I raked up droppings under their favorite roosting spots and shoveled it out onto the pasture. That part was fairly easy. Then I decided I would tackle the hen house. Our hen house has a trap door in the back that allows me to shovel out the droppings underneath their roost. It has, however, a design flaw that necessitates the removing of a board in order to lift the door to a workable height. I propped my rake and shovel against the house and went in search for the right tool for the right job--a hammer.
The right tool was no where around the barn, however. I knew there was one at the house, but that was several hundred feet up a steep hill that I had no intention of climbing twice so I decided I would make do with whatever presented itself. That happened to be a large set of channel locks. As it turns out, you can remove nails with those, but I can't recommend it. Anyway, I removed the board, raised the hatch and shoveled out the dry droppings.
Next the inside of the coop had to be tackled. I raked it out and decided to put in fresh bedding.
We had two bags of pine shavings that had been in the barn for months unopened. Now I distinctly remember that before I could pick up said bales and move them around, but when I went to pick the first one up, it was really more than I could do so I went to fetch the wheelbarrow. Even getting the bale up on the wheelbarrow was a challenge. Either the shavings had gotten damp and heavy or I had lost a considerable amount of muscle over the last few months. I hope it was the first. I did manage to wrangle the bale onto the wheelbarrow and started dragging it toward the coop. Notice I said dragging. At first I thought the wheelbarrow tire was just low, but no, it was totally flat and coming off the rim. So, the wheelbarrow was better than nothing, but not much. It took both bales to rebed the coop so I had to repeat the process, but it was finally done. I lowered the hatch and beat the board back in place with the wrong tool, but the job was finished and fairly well too.
The chickens, seeing that the show was over, hopped up to their roosts in the rafters, continuing to shun the now newly cleaned hen house. Oh well.