Trellis almost completed

Went to the Lumber store today and bought some roof beams.  They had 2×6 boards 20 feet long.  NO, I did not go to Home Depot because they don’t have that kind of lumber.  I picked up the missing pressure treated board I needed to finish off the box over the long window.  Mr. President and I installed it then spent thirty minutes tying branches to the trellis in an attempt to get it to grow away from the house and onto the new trellis addition.   I found a couple of large flexible branches and plopped them onto the new trellis section.  We will see if they will creep out.  I am going to give the bush more water this year in an attempt to get it to grow more voraciously.  

New roof beams sticking out.

I started in on the short beams for the roof.  What a pain.  It would help if I knew what I was doing.  Not very many people support their own roofs any more.  You buy pre-made trusses.  So I have to make two angle cuts with ledges where they sit on top of the beams.  I managed to imitate it and cut five boards today and got them in place. 

Hit a fairly large SNAFU.  I have been standing on the upper platform to work on the roof, there are six boards that need to be installed where there is no walkway.  After much thinking we are installing a walkway support system, beams and ends every 18 inches.  I then lay some loose plywood on it, do my roof work and remove the plywood, Perfect.  If there are enough left overs after every thing else is done I will lay some actual floor onto those supports at a much later date.  I think two days of just beam work can get all the beams installed.  Two more weeks I can get the beams in and metal roof on.  I have made my vision known to all. 

Barn emptied out.

 Progress is happening much faster now.  Not sure why.  Maybe it just feels that way.  We tore down the rest of the Pig enclosure today.  I just need to remove the two feet of poop (ongoing theme…) and we can add the new exterior wall.

I attempted to pull the beams off the other beams we are leaving on the lamb shed.  I was just tearing the beams apart.  I ended up going to town and renting a generator for 20 minutes.  I had tried stringing extension cord, but after 400 feet I still needed another extension cord.  I just gave up, didn’t figure I would have enough voltage after I had all my extension cords laid out.  The rental was a whopping $24 and worked great.  We unloaded the trailer and brought all the pig pen roof beams over to the main barn.  I am going to use these beams cut down to 9 feet lengths to fix the upper portion of the exposed roof.  Tomorrow I want to get all these beams cut and placed. 

Upper part of roof that needs repair.

Pig pen enclosure torn down.

Markings in concrete

As in all things there is another 2 feet of crap to dig out, literally!  Once I move the old dung with the tractor we will be able to tell how long to make the exterior boards.  Nice thing was we saved two different exterior gates and one locking latch mechanism.  I found one of the supports, made out of concrete, autographed by a “Betty Gilliland age 8 years Pilot Rock, ORE”.  She was born in 1920 so this support was poured in 1928.  I will save this chunk of concrete, not sure where I am going to use it on the farm, but I will find a spot for it.  Probably as a support for some external stairs I want to add onto the backside of the barn.

First thing in the morning I am going to make a lumber run.  We will save money in labor if I buy the 14 boards, 20 feet long, that are needed to span the hole in the barn roof.  After we get the tin off the granary roof, it will take one hour to tear the rest of the building down with the tractor.  I love the concept of the tractor as “The Destructor!”.  There is no end to the amusement I get with the tractor.  

Farm.

Trumpet vine trellis revision #2.

Second hay bay almost cleared out.

 Spent the last week playing catch up.  A large part of the weekend was spent cleaning up the house.  I did hook the mower up to the tractor and spent one day mowing the driveway and out front near the road.  It looks much better now.  The cheat grass just keeps coming back.  Sometimes I think the mowing is selectively growing short cheat grass.  I did score with some used lumber.  A friend of ours is a contractor and he is trying to empty out his shop.  I snagged bits and pieces of wood and a couple of sheets of plywood. 

Mr. President, (hired help, Reagan) has been cleaning the barn on the occasional day I am working.  He is getting there.  We emptied out the end of the barn where the last large pile was hiding out.  Again, I would like to offer up a small sacrifice to the tractor gods.  One god is simply not enough to cover just how helpful the tractor has been.  We used it to yard out the debris.  Hooked onto it with a chain and piled on the small stuff and out the door it went.  It took us an hour to empty it out.  Would have taken six hours to do it by hand.  It was some heavy stuff.  I am continuously amazed by how much faster tasks get finished. 

I went out and mowed the ram pasture today.  After that was done, I went out and mowed the loop around the upper pasture.  It takes almost an hour to get around the whole thing.  I saw three baby deer.  A single and a set of twins, jumped up right next to the tractor and ran away.  I saw the momma for the twins so I knew the babies were around somewhere.  I never saw the mother for the single baby.  Rodents by the dozens!!  I was amazed by the little things crawling all over the ground as I drove by or mowed over them.  The mower didn’t hurt them and unfortunately no owls or hawks were nearby.

Zeke helping out, L shaped storage room.

 This was the last load of flooring to be hauled out.  We just stacked it up and then I grabbed it with a chain and pulled it out.  Mr. President will get the floor scraped and the rest of the barn cleaned out tomorrow.  The rest of the week is going to be dedicated to tearing down the hog enclosure.  I need the lumber to start in on the roof.  I tried to knock the boards loose, over the weekend, with the tractor but it was breaking about half the boards.  I quite messing with them.  We will try the old fashioned way and see how many can be salvaged.

The trumpet vine trellis had been needing some work.  I had put it off last year, but it could not wait.  I trimmed out all the dead vine and we added three new 4×4 posts.  I created a box in front of the long window, down low and up high.  I was short a 16 foot pressure treated board.  The only ones I had that long were green.  The rest of the trellis is orange/brown in color.  Now, I have to find one the right color.  It turned out pretty good.  I have a few more supports to add, and I want to tie some rope around the branches and pull them down and away from the house to force them to grow on the trellis.  Annmarie was trying to move a branch and broke it off.  The new branches are very fragile.  So she suggested we try and root it.  I took it up to the breeze porch and planted it in some soil.  I hope it takes, as I like this large flower vine.  It is an added bonus that the plant is over 50 years old.  We don’t want it to die. 

One more piece of metal to remove and it will be time to add the window.

Hog enclosure vanishing.

 Another day closer to getting the barn completed.  My help, Mr President, came out at 0800 this morning.  Annmarie tried to wake me up at 0500.  I hurt all over.  My body was abused by the metal grain holder from the day before.  I had to lay around in bed for another 1.5 hours to convince myself I would not die if I got out of bed.

 At 0900 I moseyed on out to the barn with my faithful companion, Zeke ( the hardhead) dog.  Annmarie wanted me to sort out one of the ewes that she thought might give birth soon and put her in with the new lamb and mom.  I figured any thing was possible with my sidekick at the ready.  I wanted to push the sheep into the corner near the ram pasture, I would then wade in and catch the one ewe, then while holding the ewe open the gate and let the rest of the sheep out.  We went into the pasture and all the sheep ran to the opposite corner of where I wanted them.  Zeke waded right in at a dead run with no instructions from me (can you say over achiever?).  He is very fast and at 30#  he can really dig in.  He had one ewe down on the ground in five seconds flat.  He hits them from the side and pulls them over by their skin.  I called him off with extreme vigor.  He let go and came right back.  Amazingly, when he does this he never draws blood.  It is very traumatizing to watch, impressive but traumatic.  We had some loud words exchanged and a small tirade about listening (yes it is just the dog and I).  We gently cornered the sheep in the appropriate corner and I set Zeke to guard the bridge.  I talked to the sheep and slowly walked up to them until I could grab the one I wanted, #13 ewe.  The rest of the morons ran away from the gate, causing Zeke to break his guard position.  I was trying to hold onto the pregnant ewe and yell at the dog at the same time.  Somewhere in here I realized that I would not be able to get the rest of the sheep out and drag the ewe all the way to the barn.  I let her go.  We then pushed the sheep up into the horse covered area.  Zeke guarded the opening and I waded in and caught the ewe again.  The sheep bolted and I called Zeke.  He actually ignored the sheep and came into the enclosure with me.  I was holding onto the ewe.  The plan was to let go of the ewe, while the dog held her in place with his intimidating good looks, and I opened the gate into the barn.  Zeke was not down with the plan.  He broke his stay position and the ewe bolted for the field.  I had to leap onto her back and pin her down while being careful since she is pregnant.  It took 45 minutes to single out one ewe and I was covered in sheep shit from the waist down.  Not how I had envisioned the whole escapade.

We managed to get all the tin off the lamb shed attached pig enclosure today.  We are going to salvage all the wood to use in the barn roof along with the tin.  It went much faster than I anticipated.  I will spend this weekend attempting to get it torn down.  This was the precursor to tearing off the granary roof.  If it continues to go well, I think we can have the whole granary torn down in one week.  Which means in two weeks we could be back at the barn fixing the roof!  If I can get the roof done by mid July, that would be amazing. 

Sarah’s Artistic  Endeavor.

Hay bay #2 has two levels of floor!

Grain Elevator ripped off front of barn.

The help worked on digging out the second hay bay on Friday.  He got about 50% done, but in the course of cleaning he uncovered a two tiered floor.  We had no idea there was a sunken section.

The soon to be tack room got shoveled out.  We finished ripping out the tack room entrance hall obstructions.  Scraped the dried poop off the floor and got it all cleaned up.  There is now a hole in the ceiling where the wooden grain chute used to be.  I really want to make this into a hole for some stairs.  This would be the stairs to get to the storage room above the tack room.  A later project, not a current priority.  The area above the tack room door needed to be cleaned out so we can get all the trash out of the barn.  That space is where the roof needs to be repaired. Now it is accessible.

I LOVE the tractor.  We hooked onto the grain elevator on the front of the barn with a chain and pulled it down in 10 tries with the tractor.  This would have taken almost a day to do it by hand.  It took us 30 minutes with the tractor.  Another hour and we ripped off the low loose boards. The granary is another set of 2×6 turned and then tongue and groove boards on the inside.  This makes the outer walls on the two outside walls 12 inches thick.  I need to put a couple windows in and the depth of the window sill is causing me grief. 

Tack room grain free.

Grain storage bin, not a surfboard.

There was an old hand made metal grain storage container up in the loft over the tack room door.  It was maneuvered down onto a large wood pile.  I had Reagan put three large boards on a slant and told him to step back.  I was about five feet in the air balanced on a garbage wood pile.  I went to give the container a shove and it would not go.  So I got in a better position and lifted the bottom and top.  My glove got stuck on the top of the container as it started to roll down the ramp with me on top of it.  I managed to surf the damn thing down to the floor on the left side of my body.  I have a huge hematoma on my left shin, several inches across and elevated an inch away from the skin and another really nice bruise on my left forearm.  It aches, gonna be stiff in the morning.

Elevated walkway cleared off.

I found a NO SMOKIN’ sign in the upper walkway.  When we get closer to finishing the inside I will mount it on a wall.  All this has been done with only 24 hours of help.  I am totally looking forward to seeing Jason come and work for a few days. 

NO SMOKIN’ sign found on elevated walkway.