Saturday, January 08, 2011

Memories Of My Life - Chapter Ten - Building Our Barn

Wooded Area Is Now The Paddock

When we first moved here in 1999, this whole side area was all thickly wooded. You couldn't even see in there due to all the trees. I used to go in there to scrounge for wood while my husband was at work during the day. Nikita and I would spend hours out there picking up sticks and dead wood and carrying it into the house to keep the stove going. As you can see there was no barn. To the side you can see a little bit of what would eventually be our barn. At the time of this photo, we hadn't brought our horses home yet.



Waiting For The Lean-To Be Finished!

After the horses were here as I told before, we were hit with a bad tornado that took out most of the trees on our property. They lived through 2000 with no barn or building of any kind. Georgie Girl decided enough was enough, and she wanted a barn or something. So she refused to come up to the area where we fed them. I had to carry her food to her or she would not eat. So my husband scraped some money together and started working on the lean-to. You can't see it too well in this picture, but she came up this area after he started working on it. She would stand there and watch him work on it. He finished it and she and Dark Shadow loved the lean-to. At that time we did not have our third horse.


Can you find the horse in this picture?

Well as you can see we finally got the top of the barn up. We built it little by little. The horses were already using the downstairs. But we had no place to store hay or anything else. 


Plastic Covering The Floor Upstairs.

It was a lot of work and my husband built it completely with only using manual tools and his chainsaw to cut the wood.


Roof In Place.

This is what it looked like when we finally got the roof on. That made all the difference in the world as I am sure you can imagine. 



Roomy Upstairs!

It;s big and roomy inside. And now it has our solar panels on top of the roof. The wiring goes through the barn, and underground to the house. We still need to get the doors on, the porch and the box stalls. The porch will have a platform on the roof so my husband can clean off the solar panels without having to climb on a ladder to do it.

As It Looks Today With Solar Panels On Top Snow Covered!

Today, this is what it looks like. The barn is the heart of your homestead. And I am pleased with our barn. Now we are onto working on the house. It has made our life a lot easier. If you have animals they need some kind of protection from the outside elements. Even though when it is cold or especially, snowy, the horses stay outside. But the object here is that they can come in if they are so inclined. 


Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole
All Photographs Copyright © 2010  Kathleen G. Lupole



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