A significant part of my day is devoted to poop. Not my own, mind you (I don't have the time for that anyway), but rather that of our cows, who fill a few wheelbarrows with the stuff every day. To keep myself entertained during this twice-daily Scoopin' O' the Poopin', I've adapted a few songs. I have my own version of James Brown's "SexMachine", and Lennon's "Imagine". My versions just replace the appropriate nouns with situation-appropriate fecally-oriented words.
The barn project -- the same one I expected to be finished last March -- has gone on a tad longer than expected. The hay lofts are filled with snow rather than hay this winter. We finally let the perennially absent original contractor go and hired another Amish contractor we've had good experiences with before. He was able to get some more siding up before having to go back to another previously scheduled project, and has more coming from his brother's mill. For now, the local pigeons really enjoy the open "perches with a roof" configuration.
The only sawn lumber thus far is in the roof, and all came from trees cut when we were making room for the new barn. The foundation is made of partially buried boulders. The roofing is steel siding salvaged from the moved barn as well. Being contrary as I am, I decided to make the rafters the old way, using pegged mortise & tenon joints without a ridge pole.
Henry helped out with the roof as well. It's pretty neat seeing him go from nailing random scraps of lumber together to doing truly useful tasks -- and doing them well to boot!This last weekend we saw our pigs off to freezerland. Our usual on-farm butcher (a vietnam vet getting up in years) was out of commission, as was a backup butcher, forcing us to bring them in ourselves. In anticipation of this, I parked our pickup in their pen a week in advance. We loaded their feeder in the back and constructed a ramp for them to reach it. After learning that hogs are terrified of heights exceeding 6 inches or anything which could be construed as slippery (like a gently sloping ramp), I managed to make something they would use.
When their fateful day arrived, we had trouble getting them all in the truck at once. Attempting to keep some of them in the truck while we lured the others in only made matters worse, as they freaked out, shoved us aside (a 300lb hog is very strong!) and bolted back down the ramp. Eventually we managed to get two of the five loaded and made it to the processor with them. After consulting with the butcher, I decided that my best option would be to dispatch the remaining three at home for delivery in a somewhat less animated state.
Though I've always been present at slaughter time, it's the first time I've had to kill our own hogs. It's just a .22 shot to the brain followed immediately by slitting their throat to bleed them out. I don't think I enjoyed it any more than the hogs did, but I do feel better about doing it myself. I've long felt that everyone eating meat should participate in butchering. Hiding the reality of meat production really cheapens the lives of the animals that we rely upon, as does hiding them out of sight in hog barns.
Clover (our border collie) has been quite distraught over fact that her "Piggy TV" was suddenly dropped from the airwaves, and regularly checks their pen to see if they've returned. We grew quite attached to this year's batch, and feel immense gratitude that we were able to know them during their brief lives, despite their demonic squealing and leg biting (or were those love bites?).
Posts
2 comments:
David,
The barn and shed look great. But maybe you can answer something I've wondered about for a while. How are timber frame building attached to their foundations? It looks like the shed is sitting on the 4 corner rocks. Will it stay there in a heavy wind?
Thanks
Good question -- one I'd wondered about myself. The shed has nothing anchoring it to the rocks, so if it were in a particularly windy spot, there is potential for it to slide off (but I could just jack it up and slide it back on, I think).
Our 1870-ish house and barn are both on stone foundations, and nothing anchors them in place other than their weight. As I saw on mountain-top fire lookouts I visited and worked on in the Cascade Mountains, there's always the possibility of adding cable anchors for super high wind loads.
We did put anchor bolts in the poured foundation of the new barn to hold the sill plates down, but there's nothing anchoring the framing to the sill plates other than toe nails and siding. I suppose that's really the same as it is with stick framing, though.
Most timber framed structures use sill plates the same as stick framed structures, so the differences in anchoring aren't due to framing style so much as type of foundation and the builder's laziness and/or concerns, imho. I'm thinking that anchor bolts never came into widespread use until the advent of concrete foundations.
Post a Comment