A Barn centered weekend

With the impending arrival of "Firefly" and her kid "Butter", Sue and I switched our focus temporarily from the cabin to the barn.

My weekend began on friday when I arrived home to find that our dear friends the Fallins had purchased a copy of the icon of St. Brigid I've had shown here for us. It is beautiful and presently sits upon the altar at St. Elizabeth's, and will do so for the next forty days before coming home to the farm. Thank you!

So, we have been busily working on building half walls and whole walls in the barn. This process began with a "cleansing" that had me making a rather large dump run saturday morning. Me and the boys must have been quite a sight beating a path way up to Hansville in our rusted old farm truck filled with all manner of domestic junk. Then after a stop for lumber and feed (Let me pause and note how much BETTER the service is at the feed store than at the Home Depot) we headed home to pound (or rather shoot - Thank you Steve) nails.

We are using as much scrap lumber as we can find for this project and so it may not be pretty, but it will be functional. After this little blog I am going to "craigslist" to see if I can find some free - or next to free - red paint.

Fencing has also been an ongoing project. On the weekend of the "barn" raising (this stands to get confusing...the official barn raising was actually our working on the cabin), Sue and Valerie made heroic accomplishments with post hole digging. Sue has continued working on these through the week and I believe most of the posts are now set. So soon we'll be able to start stringing the fencing.

In my life, I've never felt more satisfied with working like this. I don't know that I can explain it, but just having your own little patch of land to care for and work upon is a glorious thing. A small taste of what a "real" farmer feels I suppose when he looks from his porch across hundreds of acres of freshly plowed soil.

I had to laugh a little as I watched Sue haul out the old bagging lawn mower and cut a swath through some of the higher grass. She then put the mower away and dumped the trimmings upon the chickens who gleefully devoured it. You see, we don't manicure our lawns here...we harvest it.

It's some of the best, most fulfilling "yard work" I've ever done.

Comments

Liz in Seattle said…
You're very welcome! May the prayers of holy St. Brigid guide and keep your little farm.

Love,
Us
Susan Sophia said…
I have to add that it was not just Valerie and I but my MOM dug 2 post holes as well!!!!
fdj said…
I didn't know that...but of course, GrammaFaith's help during her stay with us was immeasurable in many ways.

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