Plans for a Small Barn
(Page 2 of 5)
March/April 1970
By Ed Robinson
I was determined that our barn would be easy to operate with the best practices adapted from commercial barns and not cost us a fortune either. We moved to our country house in the fall and didn't start our barn building until the following spring. During the "long winter evenings," which actually flew by as time does at our place, we worked out scale models of goat stalls, brooder, hutch, feed storage, etc.
RELATED CONTENT
With this unique design, anyone can keep a few chickens, even in small back yards....
Turn your dreams of country living into reality....
When it comes to funeral planning, there are now many sustainable options for families to consider,...
The world is facing serious energy problems in the face of global climate change and declining supp...
DOE and EPA's National Action Plan Vision for 2025 outlines strategies to help lower the growth in ...
I was also able to locate not far away, a dilapitated horse barn and bought it "as is" for $35. It had a lot of good siding and some usable timber in it.
Wrecking Is Fun
Wrecking the old barn was fun. A couple of teenage boys in the neighborhood got interested in my barn project and they turned out to be a big help in tearing down the old barn. In fact, if you can locate an old building to use and get it cheap enough, then I highly recommend rounding up a couple of teenage boys, buying them each a fifty cent wrecking bar, and turning them loose on the barn you want to demolish. Of course, you'd better be around to see that they don't pull the barn down on their heads.
Anyway, a Saturday afternoon and Sunday was enough time for us to get the sizable horse barn down flat. The following half-dozen winter weekends we spent in what is known as "cleaning up the lumber." This is the tedious process of going over every piece of timber and board and pulling out the old nails. Incidentally, this job is what makes it costly to hire a carpenter to take down an old building and re-use the lumber in a new structure. Usually, unless you are given an old building outright, it doesn't pay to have a carpenter pull it down, clean up the lumber and build with it. A carpenter dislikes old boards because he's apt to run his good saw into a nail and then its an hour's job to resharpen and reset it. Incidentally, an old barn is worth more than an old house—a house doesn't usually supply any more usable lumber and the wrecking job is much greater.
As we cleaned up a pile of lumber, we stowed it in our Crosley, with one of the front seats removed and the top down, and trucked it down the long hill to our place. Naturally, we piled it well so the air could circulate through it until spring.
When the ground thawed, we started building. I believe it was around the first of April when we could actually begin the trenching for the foundation. Before we started, Carolyn and I had a long heated discussion as to exactly where the barn was going to be located. She wanted it six feet closer to the house than I did. Her desire was based on aesthetic reasoning, mine on the practical point that if it were six feet closer, then I would have to dig and chop my way through a tremendous root. Finally, after we delayed the digging a weekend while we argued, we agreed to compromise because the goat we'd bought was due to kid the last week in May, and we had to get the barn done so she could freshen in it—a goat is supposed to "take to" a place after she has had her kids there. We compromised by splitting the difference, only I still dug through the root.
Page:
<< Previous 1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
Next >>
