This Old Barn

Friday was a lovely day, and I caught myself surveying the property as I always do on the first reasonably warm and dry day of spring. Our house is old, built in 1835, and was once the primary farm house for a very large property. The property has since been divided, and we now own about two acres that includes the house, two out buildings and an old barn foundation.

Most of the year, you can’t really see the barn foundation because it’s so terribly overgrown. But in the spring, one can get a fleeting glimpse of the old stone walls, and imagine what must have once stood there.

The former owner (now deceased) and his sons told us of the barn. They used to keep animals in it and what not. Sometime later, well before we bought the house, the barn collapsed. The remnants of its wooden walls now line the interior of our garage.

There have been times over the past eight years that we have lived here, that I have thought how wonderful it would be to uncover the old barn and maybe make use of the space.

For what, I don’t know yet. Maybe for a sunken patio? A burn pit? Rebuild a barn and use it for horses? Use one of the walls for the side of a chicken coop? Maybe a sunken garden? We don’t know.

So for a few fleeting days in the spring, we can actually make out the outline of the barn. Every year we think that we’ll clear out the bushes and trees. And every year, we haven’t.

This morning I awoke early planning to go to a sword lesson. My body rebelled in many ways (not least of which was a painful knee), and I opted to stay home. But it was such a beautiful day that I was drawn out of the house. I stood over the barn foundation and decided that this year we were going to clear it out.

One day’s work, and we’re about half-way there. I had to use my Christmas present to chop up some thicker downed trees. It was very exciting!

The smaller trees I could cut with my Worx JawSaw (which is a marvelous little tool) or with regular loppers, for the really little ones.

The process has been fun. One of the first steps has been to find and collect all the trash that got tossed into the foundation. It is quite a deep hole and the former owner had wanted to fill it in.

There was plenty of rotten wood and several larger fallen trees.

By mid-day, we’d cleared a lot. Then I temporarily broke the JawSaw and took a photo whilst the husband fixed it. We’d made a ton of progress.

The pause to fix the JawSaw was a momentum killer. It didn’t take long to fix, but during that time I realized that it was actually quite cold outside (it was hovering around 50F) and I was completely exhausted.

We made one last press and did expose the entire far wall of the barn.

In the end, I’d say 2/3 of the floor of the barn foundation is now exposed in visible. Another day of solid work, and we’ll have the entire floor open, with the exception of some large trees in the southeast corner. Those will need a chainsaw, which we have, but it’s not working right now.

We’ll also need to clear the outside of the foundation, and shore up the walls. But we’re pleased as punch to see what it looks like so far. Who knows what we’ll do with it once we’re done, but it’s an interesting thing to see.