Working on our little barn at last!

Well we are finally working on our little barn.  We pulled down the hanging piece on the one end last weekend and then this weekend started pulling out the stalls from the inside.  We took a break from the barns today (Sunday) to get the rest of the cedar posts from CAT's friend.  These are the ones that are for what I call our "agricultural" fence.  We are thinking one side of the property will be more residential and vegie/flower garden and lawn, while the other side will consist of pasture and barn (hopefully, fingers crossed) although we are now also thinking of fencing off part of the field in front of the house as well.  It could be cut for hay or something could pasture there, maybe a male sheep if we are trying to keep him away from the females.....I am off on one of my dream tangents lol.....this is all a long, long way off.  Anyway, check out the pics.  We have been so lucky with weather.  It has been warm and fairly dry both last weekend and this.

All that is left of the old machine/drive shed is the pile you see on the left, the old antique rake and the old rotted floor boards.  The farmer who owns the land is going to dispose of these remnants with his heavy equipment by moving them to a low ravine on his property where they can naturally decompose and the nails won't be an issue.  You can see our little barn in the background and to the left side is the hanging piece of old barn that we have removed but not yet dismantled.

Our barn again but without the hanging end piece.  You can see how square it is.

A glimpse of the one stall before we dismantled and removed it.  It's hard to see but there is a manger on the left side that still had hay in it.  I wonder what happened to the animals that they didn't even get to finish their hay?

Here is a better pic of the manger...and look at the wicker chair we found in the barn on the left bottom side of the pic. 



This shot shows the manger on the other side (left) as well. They certainly are not the prettiest stalls I've ever seen but you wouldn't believe how well put together these structures were.  I couldn't get anything apart with my crowbar...poor CAT had to do it all and when I tried to remove nails on some of the boards they wouldn't budge.  It was like the wood was made of iron.



We have started numbering our logs on the inside.  I was a bit concerned when CAT first started painting  because it was so bright but he assured me that what doesn't come off on its own when I pressure wash the logs we are going to paint over with grey paint.  

This is what the one side looked like after removing the stalls.  We haven't finished the left side yet so I will add those next week once we've completed that one.



Looking pretty clean.  Soon all that will remain is the big barn and the tree over it and I don't think we are taking any of it - but you never know lol :).



Just a reminder what it looked like before!  You definitely can't see the hills in the background in this pic.

Here are our agriculture cedar posts for our wire fence.  We now have 100 posts so if we put them 12 feet apart we have approx. 1200 feet of fence - well we will once we get the expensive wire part of the fence lol.

Here are the piles from the barn demo that we have moved with our trailer.  The piles in back are 5 feet or higher to give you scale.   Once the logging truck brings all our other posts and beams we will have quite a pile.  I'm glad our property is big.

Here is Jasper enjoying the property.  I can always get a pic of him because he stands still for me...Abbey on the other hand....well......

I finally caught her once she was in the Jeep. ready to go home.   The rest of the time she was on the move because you never know...a wild turkey, deer or even a bear may be out there needing to be discovered.

Here is a pic of one of the trails we've started back through the treed part of our property.

That's it for another while folks.  Sorry this post was so long but I had to gab about two weekends worth of fun.  We will be working on the stall on the other side of our barn next weekend and maybe the roof so stay tuned.  We are so close to being done it's crazy.  We aren't going to know what to do with ourselves once it is done.  I welcome any comments or thoughts so please feel free to respond by clicking on the word "Comments" below.

Things I wish I could do!

My friend leigh at 5 Acres and a Dream Blog who inspired me to first take up blogging because hers is so amazing, has tagged me to participate in Things I wish I could do - or at least do better!.   Leigh was tagged by Mr. Simpleton at Living A Simple Life.   The challenge is to focus on some self-sufficiency skills, artistic abilities and more practical things I wish I could do - or at least do better.  I'm new to this type of thing so I hope I do everything correctly (hey maybe that could be one of my wishes) lol and I ask your forgiveness if I make any newbie mistakes.   Here are the things I wish I could do or do better:

1.  I wish I was the type of person who always said the right thing and who was witty and charming at social functions.  This doesn't really fall under the self sufficiency exactly but I had to put it in.  I confess I'm often awkward at social gatherings and usually tend to suffer from foot in mouth syndrome due to my nervousness.  Part of this is lack of practise to be sure because my husband and I are not social people by nature.  CAT often jokes with me after a get together because I sit there and worry about what I said to this or that person.  He says I have an inferiority/superiority complex, inferior because I worry about every little thing I said and superior because I think people are actually discussing me and what I said lol!  It would be so amazing to be the person who always says the right thing and is confident and well spoken.

2.  I wish I could sing.  I mean, I do pretend I can sing while doing dishes at the sink for instance and I often inflict my lack of ability on my family because I love to sing so much but it would be wonderful to have a beautiful singing voice so that you could be in a choir or maybe local musical theatre or just to awe people at Karaoke even.  I wouldn't want to be famous, just really, really talented. lol

3.  I wish I was a better housekeeper.  I know this is one that should be easy to make come true but for me it is a challenge.  Part of the problem is physical in that I have a herniated disk in my back and vacuuming and mopping are extremely hard on the back, and part of it is that I work full time but mostly it's that I just don't like it.  I love a clean house but not the process.

4.  I wish I had stronger will power (stick to it power) whether it means that I am able to stop myself from eating dessert when I shouldn't or if it means I don't spend that extra cash I was supposed to be putting away for savings, I just wish I could make a plan and stick to it.  I always seem to fall off the proverbial wagon too easily.

5.  I wish I could build our new home with my own hands (and CAT's too lol).  I think being a home builder would be a rewarding job.  To take piles of materials and almost magically turn them into a home for someone, is an amazing skill.  (Plus we'd save lots of money doing it ourselves hehehehe)

6.  I would love to be able to raise my own small flock of sheep, process their wool including dyeing it and then spinning it into yarn to knit into clothing.  I have jokingly mentioned this at work and they think I'm crazy but it just seems to me that to be able to produce, process and use something from an animal you've raised by hand is an amazing skill to have.  Since I've never even lived on a farm (technically I still don't since our house is not built yet) this will be a very large mountain to climb but never say never. :)

7.  I would love to be able to build post and beam structures like the barns of yesteryear.  For those who follow my blog you will know that we have been tearing down and cleaning up a few old barns circa the late 1800s.  The mortise and tenon structures that they and a few neighbours constructed back then, with no power equipment to speak of, are a testament to the old ways.  I find now, wherever CAT and I are driving, I am looking at all these old barns just falling to pieces in the fields and it saddens me that this skill is becoming as lost as the old barns themselves.  Also add in the skill to build log structures as well since our barn we are moving is made with logs.

8.  I wish I could grow enough produce from my garden that I could sell some at the local farmers market on Saturdays.  This is a little dream that has been flickering in the back of my brain.  I shopped several times this summer at one of our local farmers markets and although I would have preferred to be eating produce I'd grown myself, it was interesting to see the different vendors and even to meet some who are located close to our 5 acres.  This will likely remain a dream since I work full time in an office but who knows, maybe we'll win the lottery and I can see the dream come true.

9.  I can sew a little, and once I even managed to sew slip covers for our couch and loveseat (they've since worn out and have yet to be replaced) but I am no proficient and I would really love to be a talented seamstress.  I would enjoy being able to slip cover any chair or sofa that I took a mind to or making some of my own clothes or clothes for others too.

10.  Lastly I'd like to be able to take some of the old barn materials we've salvaged and build things with them like frames for mirrors/pictures or crafts such as wooden boxes.  Maybe a wooden box with little sections in it for keeping individually wrapped teas (I've been wanting one of these myself) or what about spices (my calendar for November has this very thing on it with  a few of the drawers labeled with this or that spice and then all the rest of the drawers labeled sugar lol).

Well, I guess that is about all I can think of at this moment.  I'm sure there are oodles more I could come up with.  Traditionally, I would now tag others to complete the challenge but since I haven't yet had the time to expand the blogs I follow and I don't have too many followers to my blog yet, I will leave it at that and just put the challenge out to all who read this blog.  Maybe you can just make your own mental list or better yet put some of your biggest and best wishes in the comments below.  Thanks again to Leigh at 5 Acres and A Dream for thinking of me and for challenging me to focus on my wishes and dreams since what is life without a few wishes and dreams to chase.   Cheers!

It's Halloween, the lamp is lit..........

Flash on!

Happy Halloween to all of you out in blog land. 

Flash off!

Bye, Bye Machine Shed - This is what the site looked like after CAT and I tore down the machine shed structure on Saturday, in the rain.



We had a slight snowfall Sunday morning and I couldnt resist taking a picture of our little barn with the snow on the roof.  I can only imagine how it will look once that sagging end piece is gone and it has a nice new metal roof and is sitting snugly on our property.  I knowyou are probably sick of seeing the barn in photos but I cant help myself lol.



This is what was left by Sunday at 3:00.  We couldnt stay too late because we had to get home for the Trick or Treaters.  It may not seem as though much changed but the large metal roof sections take time to tear apart.  We were able to disassemble more than half of the roof plus we had a nice visit from the neighbour as well who gave us a bit of history about some of the old antique farm pieces hanging around and other local history - very interesting.

The familiar shot from the road but now there is no machine shed blocking the view of our barn (well almost no machine shed lol)

These are Sandhill Cranes which CAT and I have been hearing but never seeing.  As we were pulling out I noticed them out in the field.  Very exotic.

Well thats all folks for another week.  We are almost done all that we can do by hand and are very close to actually working on our barn so stay tuned.  As usual your comments are welcome and appreciated.

Barn Demo Update

I didn't have the gumption to post a blog of our last weekends work so I figured I'd better post something this weekend.  We've completed the clean up of the large collapsed barn and we've been working on the machine shed structure.

This pic is taken from the opposite side of the barn yard.  There is nothing left now of the large collapsed barn.

This pic is taken from the roadway.  You can see the big barn on the left and then our little barn and the machine shed seem to be one structure but ours is in the background and the machine shed is in front.  I have another shot from this angle later in the post and you can see our barn through the machine shed.



Here you can see the machine shed or carriage house or grainery or whatever it was.  (It does still have grain on the floor in the right side bay).  At this point we've stripped most of the cedar siding but if you look closely you will see CAT working on the boards in the peak at the far end.  Where's Waldo? lol



Here is a closer look.  He's crazy.  I was having a hard time getting him to come down he liked it up there so much.  Again, I think it reminds him of being a kid.

Here is our little barn from the side you haven't seen yet.  This side has double doors and you can really see the rafters well in this pic.  Check out the wreath that is hanging on the barn just left of the doorway.  Somebody once loved this little barn.  You can really tell from this angle how square the barn is still.  The round log ends you see are the floor joists for the hay loft above.  Most of them are still in perfect shape.

This is what the machine shed looked like by the end of the day.  The timber frame is still in great shape and so we are going to try to get it down without damaging the mortise and tenon joinery and we are going to label and number this frame as well, perhaps to put up ourselves for a large workshop down the road or for storage for CAT's beloved trailer or maybe a camping trailer someday.  I was trying to talk CAT into building a house with this but he wasn't biting lol.

Lastly, here is a pic from the road again.  You can see right through the machine shed now to our barn.  The people that were supposed to be taking the big barn on the left, have failed to show up yet.

Today we had a different project, since it was raining too hard to work on the barn.  CAT had found some cedar posts from a friend, for our "agricultural" fence which we are putting down the one side of our property (we are having a split rail fence down the side closest to the house as mentioned in previous blogs)  Our intent at this point is just to enclose our property perimeter but eventually we hope to have either a few sheep to graze this pasture or perhaps goats although we are thinking we would like the goats to help clean up the poplar seedlings and poison ivy in the back part of our property more than in the front.  Of course with both sheep or goats we will need additional fencing to close in their pastures but for now it will be nice to be able to see our property lines.

Our cedar posts for our agricultural fencing (page wire).  The ones on the left are 9' long and the ones on the right are the 8'.  We still have another load to get another day.  Originally we were going to use these along with metal posts but the cost of the metal posts would be way more than what we could get these ones for so we will use these as much as we can.  We do have several existing metal posts on old fencing already on our property so we will use these as well.

Well, that's it for another week. Thoughts?

Thanksgiving Weekend fun!

Another great weekend working on the barn only this weekend , on Sunday, we took a day to relax and give thanks and to eat lots of turkey and stuffing and pie.  Our daughter came home for the weekend from university which was totally awesome!!!  She has been so busy this year with school and work and volunteering that she has barely had time to chat so we had a great family get together, just the 4 of us.  We didn't travel to attend Thankgiving dinner with the rest of my family this year in order that we could continue with our favorite hobby....yes you got it.....barn demolition.  What else?  This weekend's work started out in a rather disheartening fashion because we had to tear off the three roof sections that were hanging over the straw bales, in order to clean them up.  Let me tell you these roof sections are a lot bigger once you get them on the ground and it was depressing  to feel like we were starting over with a huge mess.  Then to make matters worse we pulled down the remaining posts and beams that were standing over the straw.  Not a pretty site.  By the end of the weekend though we had everything cleaned up save for a few pieces of roof boards on the straw that we didn't have time to finish.

CAT up on the straw...you can see the beams that had to be pulled down as well as the barn wall behind him.  It gives you some scale to see how large the bales are.

CAT on bales again - he said it reminded him of being a kid

Here you can see the large roof sections that had to be pulled down.  They are seemingly ready to fall onto my sons head......but don't worry...it's an optical illusion.

This is the old drive shed which is next on our agenda before we actually start on our little barn.  Some large pieces of barn board were calling our name and we took a break from collapsed barn clean up to salvage a few of those "money" pieces.  You will hear and see more about this structure next weekend.

This photo is taken from the other side of the barn.  This side was all treed but the farmer has been busy removing the trees.  I think maybe seeing what has been done to date has motivated him to get in on the action.  They are planning on tile draining and planting this field down the road once the barns are removed.

All cleaned up again only now the roof sections are gone as are the posts and beams and the lone remaining barn wall.

A closer look at all our hard work.  It's so clean.  Hard to believe that a 40' x 60' (approx.) barn was once collapsed on this site

A look at our growing lumber pile back at our property.  These are the pieces that we have been able to fit in the trailer - the big pile of lumber CAT is standing beside is barn board.  I would say this has been a great haul so far.

And of course these are the large posts and beams that are waiting to be picked up by the logging truck.  We have this pile as well as the original pile that we have added more to as well.  It is hard to judge scale in this photo but the hand hewn square beam in the front is approx. 1' x 1' x 30'.  These pieces can be milled and turned into flooring, furniture or just used as decorative beams.  We will have to see what they become.

More barn demo pics

Another weekend hard at it on our barn demo/cleanup and we accomplished quite a bit.  We purchased a couple of burn barrels to clean up the small rotted and broken pieces of the barn rather than hauling them off to pay an arm and a leg to take them to the landfill.  We are removing (and hoping to use) everything from the property other than these small pieces.  On Sunday we started working on the roof that just has old cedar shingles on it and the shingles burn readily and are cleaned up easily this way.  Also, the burn barrel catches any nails so I don't have to remove them and they can be screened out later. 

One of our burn barrels

A view of the pile on Sunday morning.  CAT and I had removed the last of the metal roof on Saturday.

When I was walking around Sunday morning taking pictures I noticed a fox running over the straw and heading toward our barn.  He was too fast for me to take a pic.  There are a few large holes inside our barn and CAT figured it was a fox hole and as usual it appears he was correct.  I must say I feel a bit sad about removing the roof over his head.  He has quite the home right now but it wont be there long.  Sorry little fox!   

We found this neat little plant stand under one of the roof pieces.  I am going to sand it and paint it and put it in my potting shed or somewhere to remind me of our barn demo fun.  It is amazing it did not rot.  How about yellow!

A little treasure found buried under the collapsed barn!

Now that is clean if I do say so myself.

Here is a pic taken from the usual spot...the sun was causing some problems with the picture but I will not complain.

This is our second post and beam pile.  You can see the big old beauty barn in the background that is being removed by a crew this week.

We found out on Saturday that the big old beauty is being removed this week by a crew. It may be completely gone by the time we go back this weekend. I must say I am sad since I had been hoping that we would have the gumption to do it too, once we gained our confidence on the small one but with just working weekends and by hand it is better we stick to the original plan. We are going to have oodles of material to use to construct a good potting shed, chicken coop and who knows what else so best not to be too greedy lol. Well that is it for another week. Your comments are encouraged and welcome. Cheers!

My Old Garden

My beloved William Baffin Explorer Rose (affectionately known as Willie) climbing my old arbour.  I am hoping to have a Pergola someday on our new property covered in climbing roses.  Fingers crossed.

I figured it was time to talk about something other than our barn demo and our cedar rails and I thought it would be a good time to put on some pics that would show you another of my passions.  It is hard to look at these pictures now because my garden is really the only thing I miss about our house we sold, in order to follow our dream of living in the country.  Our old neighbour was in the office where I work yesterday and after a chat with him I got to missing my garden and wondering how it is making out under another's hand.   My husband and I started this garden from scratch and built it over about a 5 year period.  Living in town we were blessed with a good size lot that enabled us to fence off the back 60 feet in order to keep the dogs in the dog yard and my garden safe from trompling paws.  I'm just going to upload the photos in no particular order as I've been having a hec of a time with Blogspot(the blog software) and uploading pics.  I'm including shots from early summer and late summer so you can see some of the different flowers I had.



Early summer in my garden

 

Another early summer shot.  You can see the Astilbe plants in the foreground.

You can see the paths in this one.  The flower beds are supposed to be shaped like a pinwheel although I doubt from an arial view they would have been very correct.

My raised vegie beds.  I loved these beds that CAT built for me from one of his co-workers own cedar.  Our new vegie garden will be much larger than this one was ( I already have started planning).  We had so much shade in our old garden that it never thrived the way a garden will in full sun.  I'm looking forward to full sun gardening.

My father took this photo, after we listed the house I believe, toward the end of last summer.



 


This is the view from the garden looking back toward our old house(this is what we used to call the "dog yard" lol but it was really just our lawn.  You can see my little greenhouse on the left.



My little patio.  My husband and I purchased the bricks as seconds from a local company going out of business.  They cost us next to nothing and we spaced them far apart so the moss would take over.  In early summer the bleeding hearts were covered with blooms as were the Sweet Woodroffe.  It is looking a bit "green" in this photo

Well, these are just a few shots of our old garden. I know we will never have one quite the same again but with my 5 acres I have so many dreams and plans and oodles of space to start a new gardening adventure and I'm gnawing at the bit to get started. I just recently purchased a bunch of tarps on sale for next to nothing in order to kill off the grass in my vegie area. I am just going to lay them down, throw rocks on top (which we have in abundance if you read my blog about our fenceline) and kill the grass underneath. This will leave all the roots as nutrients for my soil but not any grass/clover alive to take over my garden. I'm hoping to give it a turn next summer while we are building and amend it accordingly and then the following summer I will be ready to plant. Again, fingers crossed and here's to hoping all goes well. Please feel free to comment by clicking on the word comment at the bottom of this post. Cheers!