The Homestead Barn - Part Two

Taken from the front upstairs door of the barn.

We built our barn little by little. My husband did all the work, I just gave him ideas or fed him the fuel to keep him going. He used the chainsaw for cutting the wood but other than that, he did the whole building with manual tools. No electric tools at all. We desperately needed a place to store hay. In the beginning we had our old van that had died. It was one of those work vans and it was a great vehicle, that we used until it would not move ever again. We stored hay in it and it held a lot. It was a sad day when the junkyard came to pick it up. We also tried to store hay on pallets under a tarp.................ruined most of it! It got moldy. Not a good way to store hay. Especially for horses, as they will not touch bad hay with a ten foot tongue!

Lots of room upstairs!

Having a peaked roof makes the snow fall right off. Now that we have our solar panels on there though, it is not rolling off quite so easily. So my husband bought a roof rake from Amazon and is using that. He has to pull the truck up close to the barn and stand in the back. He had an accident with doing it on the ladder so that is not an option. We have plenty of room as you can see for hay and many other things in the upstairs of the barn.

Hay is for horses!

The corner you see from this photo is where my husband keeps his tools and stuff. It isn't organized as well as he'd like, but hasn't had a chance to work in there much. Eventually, he wants a little building for his tools and for his workshop. Not upstairs. Then he can work on his Harley right there too. Maybe put our extra wood stove in there or use the kerosene heater so he can work in the winter too. He likes to have projects. Hasn't had much space to work on them until we completed the upstairs of the barn.

Cool chairs! 

The chair on the left my husband made out of two boards. You can take them apart and carry them anywhere. The other chair, I have a whole set of, and so does everyone in our family. My mother-in-law would pick up old lawn chairs from the garbage and she made the chairs using macramé.

Backside View Of The Barn

The trouble with horses as I have mentioned many times on here, is that they like to eat wood. Now our girls get plenty of food and hay. Often during the day, we take them out more hay and more water. They eat grain twice a day. But they get bored or something, and will chew on their barn. They chew on the wood that is around their water buckets. They ruin everything. Trees too. So we have moved their fence many times so they can't reach the trees. Georgie and Dark Shadow have very long necks and can reach things you would think they couldn't possibly reach. On the back of the barn you will see those holes in the board and that is what they did. I had to move the fence back so they could not reach it. It is very frustrating to say the least. 

Front View How It Looks Presently.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing our barn. In my blog stats I have had many people searching for directions on how to build a homestead barn. I can't really give you directions as my husband just built it as he went along. He worked with a crushed right arm and two very bad shoulders, so I don't really know how he did as much as he did. But he paced himself, and didn't work nonstop for days. He would work a little and take a break. Sometimes his breaks were for weeks. His son helped him on the peak and that is the only help he ever got. Not putting the metal on, but building the peak. He had to put the whole roof on by himself with no help from anyone. I think he did a great job!

If you are searching for plans to build one, there are some very good books out that we had used. Our basic barn is a pole building, so just search for pole buildings. We are pretty happy with our result so far.

Copyright © 2011 Kathleen G. Lupole

All Photographs Copyright © 2011  Kathleen G. Lupole