Building Our Barn





	Here are Molly and Pearl pulling logs out of the woods. Horse logging was the perfect solution for our wooded, rocky, hilly terrain! These two Belgian pulling horses are full of vim and vigor, yet gentle and sweet. Bill Philbrick of New Albion Farm in Albion Maine is Molly and Pearl's proud owner and skillful teamster.
	Such a beautiful team of horses! They are so eager to get to work! Bill's gentle manner coaxes the best from this magnificent team.
	Sawing the logs into lumber. Kevin and Sharon Wacome from Norridgewock Maine arrived with their Wood Miser and sawed the logs into beams, boards, and framing lumber. They did outstanding work!
	Our Kubota tractor worked great to move the logs from the piles to the saw.
	The Wood Mizer takes off the first layer of bark. It was so exciting to see the progression of logs to lumber!
	Freshly cut sills waiting to be moved to the barn site.
	It took tons and tons of gravel to create this level area for the barn. Carving spots out of the woods for new buildings is always a major undertaking! The lumber was moved from the cutting area to the awaiting "flat spot". December 6, 2005, let the fun begin!
	The sills are put into place, measured, leveled, notched, and finally attached. The 20 X 30 barn will have a 14 X 20 addition attached to one side.
	And, the barn begins to rise!
	The barn starts to come together! With all of the snow, ice, and rain storms, cold and wind, the work still progressed.
	The work starts again! Finally, the last week of April brought dry ground and some clear weather. First things first, the barn needed to be re-leveled after the winter frosts. With that done, the sides and top were straightened and leveled.
	On May 1, 2006 the first trusses went up. It's now July 21st! Things have not progressed as nicely as we had hoped! First of all it rained and then it rained, and after that it rained some more. May 25th brought foot surgery for Janice and then Ken came down with a nasty case of tendonitis!
	July 26, 200, the roof is taking shape! Both sides have about half of the roof boards up. Next comes the roofing paper, then the green metal roofing!
	August 19th, the roof is a reality! The tar paper went up along with the metal roofing with a little help.
	The ridge cap goes on.
	The walls are going up!
	September 3rd. Ken is framing the addition.
	Once framed, the barn looks even more massive!
	Almost ready for windows!
	December 20th, THE BARN IS DONE! Here is the great sliding door on the side. The Angora goats were the first to inhabit this barn along with about 500 bales of hay!
	The large sliding doors on the front will make cleaning easy and a piece of fencing makes a great sun porch for the girls. It's nice to be able to close it up at night and in bad weather.