Moving to a new house is generally a simple process - you pack boxes, haul them, unpack them and then arrange everything you've unpacked. You haul furniture and other big items, unload them, and arrange them where you think you will need them. You can make a grand plan to make the move go smoother and with less physical work, but the process is still pretty much the same.
You never think that you have a lot of 'stuff' until you go to move it. We had a long flatbed trailer and took 14 loads of 'stuff' to our new home. It took 10 years to unpack the final boxes and in the end, most of the 'stuff' went to charity. So much for a grand plan.
Century Barn As It Looked When We Moved In
We moved from our city house to a small hobby farm many years ago. Most of the buildings on the property were over 40 years old. The barn was at or over 100. The previous owners had wanted to remove it and put up a new pole barn. Their plan was to burn it down but the fire warden would not let them do it, due to the proximity of the other buildings on the property. The barn is made of post and beam hickory - mostly hand hewn. That type of wood can get very hot. The radiating heat could ignite wood in other buildings and would likely have melted the siding from the house and the milk house.
Their next thought was to dig a big hole and bulldoze it into the hole. There are so many things wrong with that idea, and again, they were not allowed to do this.
The barn was in pretty bad shape. The roof had started to leak, the wood on the exterior was curling and carpenter ants were building sizeable homes in the posts and wood supports. The rock and rubble foundation was crumbling and water was forming rivers underneath the dirt floors. The soil in this area is fractured granite with an overlay of clay. Clay soaks up a lot of water in the spring and during the summer will expire that moisture and then shrink, dry and crack. It grows and shrinks, grows and shrinks. This moves and crushes whatever is in it or on top of it. There is some elasticity in rock and rubble walls used for foundations but after that many years, the mortar gets old and is no longer a glueing force.
The barn was used to house cattle on one end and horses on the other - long before we purchased it. Then it was used to store loose hay in the west end of the barn. This had been built up to a depth of over 10 feet and by the time we moved in, that hay had rotted and was down to just over 6 feet. The east end of the building, the north and northeast corner of the foundation and support beams had crumbled from the water and clay issues and the support beams had severely rotted. All in all, at first glance, we were planning on taking it down.
Northeast Corner
Then we took some time and really looked at the barn, inside and out, and completely changed our minds.
Whole Timber Roof Support
Barns are built to house animals and to store forage for those animals. As such, there is basically a frame and wood is placed on that frame with spaces in between to let the air flow through. This is enough protection for the animals and also keeps the forage dry so it does not start to break down, heat up and start on fire.
It was a warm sunny day. The sun was shining through the wooden slats, lighting up the entire barn. We had the big doors open because of the dust. You could smell the hickory and several other wood types. The original axe marks in many of the posts and beams could still be seen. The roof support was made entirely from whole trees - not something you would normally find in a barn.
But what sold us was this - there was a very old rocker in the middle of the floor up on the second level. It was covered in a green fabric and had arms and feet in the shape of swan heads. When you sat in it, you could swivel around and see the exceptional craftsmanship that had gone into the original building of the barn. How could we tear it down now after seeing that? How could we destroy what hands had built and what hearts had felt?
We agreed that we would have to find another way to keep and use the old barn. And that my friends, is the end of this part of the story. Please stay tuned for the next part where we put the barn up in the air during tornado season.
Peace and Happiness
Thanks for reading!