Barns painted!

Last year I was at the barn with John and Tracy, and I said offhandedly that they needed painting. (My dad couldn't remember if they had last been painted in the late 80s or early 90s. Definitely not in the last 16 years we had been farming here, anyway!) John said he wanted to paint the barns next summer.

I thought it was sort of a ... that would be nice, but Tracy and John talked about it over the year, and it became apparent - they really did want to do it! 

It was a hard job. They power washed, but it really didn't take the paint off, so they scraped both buildings. It was hot, and they were covered in paint chips and sweat. We got a lift, because the barn is really tall, and it seemed really hard to do it with a ladder. 

After the scraping John sprayed red paint and Tracy painted the white. It took them long days and many hours and...they look so great! Thank you so much to my dear sister and John! I can't thank you enough.  

We still use these barns. They were built over 100 years ago. Still going, and better looking now!

I rarely write here...but I do here! 

Losing a floor, gaining a use

Kris went on a trip with other dairy farmer friends to tour five dairy farms in Wisconsin.  Huge dairy farms - like some of them milking 5000 cows.  Some of them had rotary parlors, where the entire room turns (with the cows in it) in a big circle and the milking never stops.  One of the farms had its own water treatment system.  He said it was interesting to talk to the other farmers he went with as well as to see the different kinds of farms.

I was telling my friend Julie about it - her family owns the hand truck company Magline.  She thought it was interesting that the farmers were willing to give tours of their farms to other farmers - she said there was no way that her company would give a tour to another hand truck company.

The nice part about it is - it's not like we're in competition, because we all have somewhere to sell our milk.  If we were competing for customers, it'd be a different.  But because we're not, it's a sort of feeling like we're all in it together.  As a result, farmers are always giving tours to other farmers!  For example, the president of our local MMPA has made it a point to tour almost every farm in his district.  People go to see each other's new barns and new setups.  It's like giving someone a tour of your new home.

It may not be everyone's idea of a vacation, but for a group of young dairy farmers, it's great fun.

***

The guys have been carefully removing the floor of the haymow.  Josh said it was interesting seeing how it was all put together - so long ago, by my great-grandpa Floyd Anderson.  How did they get these giant boards up there?  How did it all hold together with just two nails on one board?  Where did they get these boards - from a mobile mill or from another town?  So long ago.  We're going to use the wood when we remodel ... someday.  It's been good for 130 years and it'll be good for more!



No ceiling - more room for bales

Changing the look and the use of the barn

If you're around, drop by and see it!  I mean it.  That's what we do.

Rafters and jackhammers

We all went for a walk around the farm yesterday to look at all the New! Exciting! Developments! 

 

That's how we feel about them anyway.  All exclamation points and excessive capitalization.

 

For instance, the builders delivered the rafters for the new barn.  I tried to show in this picture how GIANT they are.  They really make this barn seem big and ... real.  It's really going to happen!

 

 

 

Kris told me he asked our vet to check if two heifers were pregnant.  Kris said as soon as he rounded them up he was sure that they were free martins, which are heifers with non-functioning ovaries.   I jokingly asked, "Why?  Were they acting like bulls?"  He said, "Yes!  Well, they were acting like calves - certainly not like pregnant cows.  They were running around and one of them jumped OVER a fence."  Which is not normal pregnant cow behavior, as you can imagine. 

 

This is normal pregnant behavior ... eating.   

We walked over to the old barn to see the changes there.  This is how it looked last August:

 

 

And now:

We're putting a hole in the side of the barn so that we can easily fill it with bales.  There's a convenient door on the other side, and by putting one on this side, we can double our bale storage capacity.

This also requires renting a jackhammer to get rid of some of the cement - also like on the other side.  We'll also have to bring in some gravel to make a higher driveway.

 

 

A jackhammer!  A JACKHAMMER!  That's just a word asking for all caps.  I'm pretty sure the whole neighborhood will be excited when that project is done.

 

***

 

Speaking of neighborhoods, yesterday my son asked me what 'community' meant.  I said that it was a group of people that cared about each other.  Later, my mom was watching as our neighbor (and friend) was cutting down a tree for firewood and had a limb fall on his head.  She called the ambulance and a bunch of neighbors went over to help - get his wife's purse, let out their dog - we had a neighbor stop to ask if we needed help, since it was near my parents' house.  The good news is, he's going to be fine!  (We all wish you a quick recovery!)  Glad we live somewhere where everyone knows everyone - especially when there's an accident!

Covered in ice

When we woke up this morning, it was 1 degree.  By noon, it was 27 degrees.

 

It's so funny when it goes from really cold to not really cold around here.  I had to go pick up some parts at the lumber mill for Kris - and not one guy coming in or out was wearing a coat!  Same with the grocery store and gas station ... once it goes above 20 degrees, it doesn't seem that bad.

 

And it looks so inviting ... 

 

 

 

As for the farm, repairs and modifications are going on as usual.  A gate broke in the parlor, and that's now fixed.  We took sliding metal sheets (sort of like sliding doors) from one barn and are moving them to modify the old calf barn. 

 

When we wanted more ventilation in the old barn for the calves, we took opened it up as much as we could.  Now that we want it closed up for hay storage, we're putting the sliders back on. 

 

Not surprisingly, it never works as easily as that sounds.  It takes a lot of time and labor in the cold - of course, coats are optional.

What are we going to call it?

Kris and I were discussing something about the farm, and I didn't know which barn he was talking about.  

 

I said we should agree upon a name to call the yet-to-be-built free stall barn.  We can't call the old free stall barn 'the old barn' because we already have an old barn.  And we can't change the name of the original old barn because I've called it that my entire life.  It'd be like changing the name of one of our kids suddenly because we had another one.  (Okay, maybe not that dramatic, but that was my reasoning with Kris.) 

 

Kris said the old barn could be called the old calf barn OR the old milking barn.  Now it's the storage barn.  The guys have been working on taking out all of the old calf housing in order to be able to store hay and straw bales in it. 

 

Here's what it looked like when we housed calves in there three years ago:

 

 

 

 

Here's what it looks like today.  This used to be where the cows were milked - at first, with my great grandpa.  Then we put in the hutches - my dad's time.  Now the hutches are gone again -

 

 

 

 

Here's a picture of the new calf barn, as of last year:

 

 

 

Over the time of the farm, the barns get all different uses.  Whatever fits the farm and the fashion of the day!  When I went out to take the pictures of the new barn, this is what I saw in the sky.     

 

X marks the spot.  Here we are, here we've been, here we'll stay.  No matter what we call it.

Falling

Kris is thinking of taking the haymow out of our old barn.

It would be like taking out the second story floor. Since there aren't any calves in there any more, there's no need to throw straw bales down. Since we get really big bales now - both square and round - getting rid of the second floor would allow us to store bales and stack them up high.

Our builder came over to take a look and give us some quotes.

He showed Kris that the barn is starting to bow. The main supports are starting to pull away from the sides. If we don't do anything, eventually the roof will collapse.

Instead, we're going to brace it. That means we'll put a plate on either end and run a cable through the whole thing to hold it all together. This is new to me, but Kris said he's seen it done in other barns.

There's also a tree in our yard that's dead. It's split down the middle. The road commission called me and asked me if I wanted them to cut it down. (When it falls, it's going to fall in the road.)

I reluctantly said yes. It's going to fall sometime, yes, but that could be years from now. I also don't want it to fall while some car is sitting there at the stop sign.

He came and spray painted a big orange 'X' on it today, marking it for felling. After it's gone, I'm going to immediately plant another one in the same place.

This centennial farm needs constant maintenance! But hey - no one gets to 100 without some repair work.

Old barn

No calves are in the old barn now. It's mostly filled with big round bales. The haymow is even empty, and Kris is thinking of taking out the floor of it to make room for more round bales.

But the calf that was bloating is still continuing to bloat, so we moved her to a pen in the old barn. That way, they can stop feeding her grain and only feed her hay in an attempt to solve her digestive problems.

My mom was at my house watching my kids and said she heard crowing from the direction of the barn. She took the kids over there to find the source. She said they found a great big rooster and three chickens strutting around on the top of the round bales like they owned the place. She said they weren't at all concerned about being watched. She said, "They just moved in when the cattle moved out!"

They're our neighbors' chickens - they have free range and have been in our yard before. They're certainly not hurting anything, but I do worry about them crossing the road and am required to make jokes about the subject.

Kris said that even though we emptied the barn of animals, the old barn just won't let go. We moved a calf back, we've got chickens - I really hope tomorrow a goat just appears. It might be a children's book come to life!