Bones of the Barn are Up!

We've had decent weather lately, not horribly hot, which gave us great conditions to get barn work done. We borrowed a post hole digger, industrial type, from some friends and when attached to our tractors PTO, it did a fine job. Our soil is heavy in clay here which proved difficult for digging at times, but good for packing around the posts. That soil type will likely harden around the posts as well as it we used concrete.

Our granddaughter Allana was here one day when we put in the very first post, thus you get the rare photograph of this blog's author. Unlikely you'll see another for awhile, I prefer to be behind the camera.

The work was slow at first as Keith would hook a post to our tractor with a chain, then guided me verbally to the correct spot where I'd lower the post in the hole, then hop off the tractor (hop? Not hardly) then help him with leveling, securing with 2 x 4's, and so on.

As I got better with my tractor skills the process picked up speed. When our son Jason came out to help the last two weekends, things went even faster.

It took ten days but we got all the posts in for the four external walls and the one interior wall. In the midst of it, the county dropped by to check progress. (He actually dropped by to take pictures of our proposed family cemetery site, but seeing our barn work he decided to kill two birds with one pack of regulatory paperwork.)

Yesterday we made the Menards trip to order the new trusses and pro-rib steel for the roof, thus completely emptying out the last of the money in our "Barn Fund" envelope. Those items will arrive in a couple weeks and be directly delivered to the farm. Inside walls and loft floor, shelving for Keith's workshop, as well as livestock stall walls, will all be built with repurposed material we have on hand, or will remove from the old decrepit house as we dismantle it.

If you look closely you'll see the barn posts are an eclectic collection of posts from the 60 year old machine shed we had torn down, brand new posts we bought at Menards (we only had to buy two) and several shorter round posts given to us by my sister Teresa after they sold their house and dismantled that pasture fence.

Next up, we'll apply the skirt boards and purloins from post to post, plus angle braces at end posts. This will give us the structure needed to attach the outside walls using all the recycled steel from the building we purchased for this project.

Keith and Fanny below take a well deserved break.

In other news: we're making great progress on our plans for a family cemetery, we're crazy busy putting up garden produce, the broilers for next years chicken suppers are growing fast and we're making adjustments to the Looney Bins foundation insulation in preparation for the upcoming winter.

 I'll blog about it soon. Promise.