Closer and closer.

We didn't get a lot of demolition done yesteday at our barn.  When we arrived it was insanely windy and the end pieces of the metal roof on our barn, where we had removed the hanging piece, had been flapping in the wind and were loosening.  With it being so windy if they were to tear off they could potentially go flying to the neighbours where they keep horses.  The two horses in the pic below have been our companions as we've worked away often taking off running when we've pulled down larger sections of barn.  Loud noises didn't seem to bother them , such as the chain saw, but when something heavy hit the ground I guess they felt the vibrations and they'd take off.  They were very curious the day we took down the machine shed as it was attached to their covered area so once it was down they were over to pass judgement.  I'm not sure what they were thinking though, they just looked it all over lol.  Anyway, we certainly didn't want any flying projectiles hurting anyone so that was how we (read CAT) spent the first part of our day. 

Our companions to the south side of the barn property.  You can see their red roofed covered area in some of the machine shed demo pics.

I have to tell you I was scared to death while CAT was up there trying to tie down the metal sheets as he had to first climb up the ladder into the hay loft of the barn, then pull the ladder up in and climb up to try and reach the metal roofing, all with wicked gusts of wind hitting him.  He used pieces of wire through existing nail holes and tied the metal down.  It's a shame to have to do this now only to have to disassemble it later.  It's hard to show scale on the pictures but he was a good 25 feet in the air.  Dangerous, but it had to be done.    You can see the end pieces in this pic

 We did manage to clear out the remaining manger and here are some pics of our empty barn.  If all goes well, once reassembled on our property I will gently pressure wash the inside and then I'm going to paint it with a Lime mixture to help brighten it up and also to help with disease resistance down the road for our animals.  We noticed some remnant lime paint on the upper logs so I imagine at one time it was all limed.

On our property this small door will face the tree line and will have a lean-to built over it.  It will be a covered area for the goats for when it's raining and also this door will be our main door for access to the barn.

This wall will face south on our property so we are going to add another window between the two upper windows to add more natural light.

This large door will face the front / road of our property which is west and will be access to the front pasture for our sheep.  I've asked CAT if we can put windows in the doors we build for this and we think we can, once again adding more natural light.

Just another photo taken looking toward the small doorway. 

The most exciting part of our day was that the logging truck owners came to survey the site and to make a plan for picking everything up.  We will have to wait for freeze up because the field is clay and is holding lots of water but other than that they felt everything should be fine and they quoted a great price for doing it.  The farmer has to remove some stumps for us first (he has heavy equipment to do this) and remove the felled trees but other than that we are good to go.  We aren't going to remove our roof until we know we can gain access because we'd rather the barn had it's roof if we have to wait until next summer for the logging truck to be able to get in there to do it.  There's no sense in it being exposed to the elements all winter.

That's all the barn demo news for this week.  We may head to our property today to give the dogs a run and clean up some of the trees CAT cut along our property line.  Have a great week!