Another Update on my Barn Repair Efforts

Well, I guess it's been about a month now since I started repairing my wind damaged barn.  So let me report on my progress.

This past week I turned my attention to constructing the covered pens at the back of the barn.  They are about 4.5 feet tall at the front and 3.5 feet tall at the back.  These will serve as covered storage for firewood, housing for small livestock, or farrowing pigs.  As I was planning this, I thought I would use 1 x 4's for the roof purlins.  But when I got to the lumber yard, I found that 2 x 4's were less expensive! A pleasant suprise.  The purlins are untreated lumber.  I thought this was best so that the screws used to hold the roof metal (and the roof metal itself) would not be subjected to the preservative chemicals in the treated lumber,

The treated boards that comprise the back wall were all recycled from a residential deck that a friend of ours removed in the course of his work as a building contractor.  I obtained a quantity of this lumber in exchange for several dozen eggs from our hens.   I love trading!  What is now the open end will be closed with a board/hog panel fence as will the balance of what was the back half of the barn.

Our son came out to "the farm" to help me Tuesday of this past week to install the back wall.  While he measured and cut the boards, I attached them with 2.5 inch screws.  His youngest daughter (4 years old) "helped" with the scrap lumber.  It was a very pleasant afternoon, unseasonably warm, and spending it with them made it very special for me.

Yesterday and last night we received the first significant rain if the year.  Today is seasonably cool, cloudy, breezy and muddy.  So, I am indoors with rhe grand-daughters as their mama and grandma both had to work today.  It is good to spend a day reviewing the work of the past weeks and anticipating the coming days.  In my anticipation, I am quick to always include "the Lord willing".  My Grandpa used to say, "Man proposes and God disposes."  So it is.

A Very Useful Tool

My grandson Aiden is a Thomas the Tank Engine Aficionado. He tells me on the Island of Sodor, where Thomas lives, the highest form of praise is to be called a "very useful engine".

So what tool or tools on your homestead would you call very useful? I have really enjoyed my Troy-Bilt “Horse” tiller since receiving it new as a gift in 1976. But it is not used nearly as often as some other “low-tech” tools around the place.

I was remembering how a lady wrote years ago in Mother Earth News about the one very useful five-gallon bucket she and her family used at their place. I checked it out in the M.E.N. archives and found the article.

In the article titled The One-Bucket Farmstead, in the September/October 1982 edition, Coreen Taylor Hart wrote:

“[W]e never could have guessed that our most indispensable piece of homesteading equipment would turn out to be a secondhand, five-gallon, white plastic bucket.”

After reading the ways she and her family used the handy container I had to agree. She said they used the recycled vessel for everything from feeding the pigs to “mixing jumbo batches of bread dough”. To her long list of tasks I added carrying stove wood into the house. It worked great but I have found a better way.

A couple months ago I bought 50 pounds of cracked corn for the chickens. It came in a bag made of woven plastic, similar to that used in making many tarps. This feed sack works great for bringing firewood in for the stove. It allows me to carry much more than I could put in a bucket and keeps the bark and wood chips well contained. Come Spring I expect it will work great for hauling compost and other dry materials around our place. A smaller bag of similar material that had contained cat food now holds wood shavings we use as tinder in the stove.



Recycling feed sacks has a long tradition in our family. As a little farm girl in Kansas, my wife wore dresses her Mom made from cotton feed sacks.

By the way, if you are reading this, I expect you will agree that the World Wide Web is a very useful tool too.