Fixing Up A 100 Year Old Barn
When thinking of our dream barn I never thought it would be an old lime stone barn. When I drove up to the farm for the first time I was in love with its old charm. I’ve always loved fixer upper shows… A fixer upper barn was right in my wheel house!
When I opened the barely hanging on door and walked in it was clear there was a lot of work ahead. Years of weather had rot all the exterior doors and they needed replacing. All the windows were broken and rotten.
Years of birds making their nests in the rafters left quit a bit of muck all over the floor of both the loft and the ground floor. The previous owners used the storage rooms to store feed that the mice had been “enjoying” and needed to be shoveled out. Suited up in my “hazmat” suit, mask, and gloves the cleaning began. The barn loft was where our cleaning efforts started... after ordering a huge dumpster.
We removed all the old straw and started sweeping, scraping, and shoveling. It quickly became apparent that some of the floor boards were rotten and needed to be replaced. While cleaning the loft we found lots of fun treasures; Old hay hooks, buckets, wooden boxes, and some old tractor parts. Along with those finds the loft had a hay pulley still hanging! We don’t plan on using the loft for hay storage, but I do see a hay pulley chandelier in the future!
After the loft was cleaned out it was time to tackle the ground floor. At this point muscles were sore and stress levels were going up. If you ever find yourself in the same situation don’t give yourself a dead line of a week and a half. We removed tires and the refrigerator that no one dared to open until it accidentally swung open right before it made it’s way into the dumpster (no dead bodies lol). Lots more shoveling and scraping old manure. Then the storage rooms/ tack rooms, we are not sure what they where used for. We did find that they have tongue and groove wood floors. Two of the room’s floors have a lot of rot from the rain coming in through the broken window. Wheel barrow after wheel barrow, all the the old spent grain was removed and finally all the gross was out of the barn! During removing all the grain I came to the conclusion to get barn cats STAT.
We rented a power washer and I went to town spraying down all the things! At that point it looked 1,000 times better. We then had to get to work making it ready for the goats. We removed the old head gates and put up hard wire panels. We built the first of five barn doors needing to be replaced. It is important to me that everything that is replaced and repaired is as close to what was there originally. We also replaced the rotten door jam. The craftsmanship of the barn is amazing for being so old and made of stone. The door opening was still square! We were able to reuse the old bolts that held the door jam in place and the original hinges for the door. We removed all the broken windows and boarded them up until we can have new ones made. After what ended up being two weeks the barn was ready for the goats!
There are still lots of repairs to be made, the doors will eventually be painted, there is still one more storage room to fix up and make usable. Along with window frames to be replaced and rewiring the barn (for the hay pulley chandelier). With every project it’s slowly being brought back to life! It is serving the goats and all the other animals well. Keeping them warm and draft free their first winter here.
It is not lost on me the labor it must have taken to gather and lay each stone and lift the wooden beams, hammering each nail. I’m grateful for the worn faithful hands that built this barn all those years ago and I’m honored to be one of its caregivers. I hope to continue to learn its history and add to it. My prayer for this old barn is to be a gathering place for hoofed, feathered, and pawed. A place where new life takes its first breath and wobbly steps. That sick and weary animals find comfort as they are tended to into the night. That the walls will fill with tools new and old. A roof to milk under on snowy mornings, keeping hands warm for the task.
Up the narrow wooden stairs that ever so slightly creek as you step looking up to the cathedral like ceilings with wooden beams hanging from them a old hay pulley draped in golden lights, their beneath the glow a long table with benches on either side… that place I pray will be a haven where friends and strangers alike share a meal grown from the land that each stone was collected all those years ago to build the foundation of this old barn.
