Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Like a TV Make-over Show…This Old Barn

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Before ….
After

What a crazy and productive weekend we had – and still found time to celebrate Easter!  Our barn underwent a total makeover, including new windows, new walls, new “deck” and new landscaping.  Plus we planted over 50 pounds of potatoes, mowed and weeded, painted fences, moved stacks of lumber and fitted a wedding dress.  All because we had so many helpers:

  • Omi worked on the wedding dress mostly, but also found time to weed and paint fences.
  • Anja baked tasty cookies, painted, sowed grass seeds, raked and watered and helped with fitting the dress.
  • Gracie made Easter dinner with an amazing ham… and patiently stood, and stood, and stood to have the dress fitted, and refitted, and refitted (and had to go to work)
  • Sam had to work a lot over the weekend, but found time and did most of the family laundry (our washer broke and she and Anja had to go to the laundromat), photographed progress and got us straw for the newly seeded lawn
  • Duff powerwashed for 3 days!!, helped with rebuilding the barn walls and stacked a lot of lumber
  • Jens, Jeff and Lars worked mostly on rebuilding barn walls, putting up the “deck” railing and moving debris
  • Tina rototilled and raked the area around the barn and worked with Anja on planting the grass seed, mowed and weed whipped around the house, the grapes and around the garden and elderberries

    Finished planting 500 Vidal Blanc vines

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    It took a little longer than anticipated, but we finally managed to plant all 500 vidal blanc vines.   I checked the almanac just for fun, and this actually was listed as a good day for planting vines!
    Right now, they are just little brown sticks in the ground – but with buds – and they all had very nice root systems.  Next we will need to run the irrigation hoses, add emitters and install the trellis system.  Seems like planting the vines was the easy part…

    More Progress on Barn

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    After preparing the inside walls all week (jacking up the outside corner of the barn, cutting new posts, and cutting a load of 2×6’s for supports), we spent Saturday and Sunday tearing off half the downstairs wall of the barn. The new posts and supports were set, and the jacks carefully removed. 
    Jeff, Jens and Lars worked most of the weekend on this.  By Sunday afternoon, half of the wall had been rebuild with sheeting, and the new windows were studded in and installed.  Hoping to get the remainder of the wall rebuild next weekend.  While this was going on, Tina raked up all the left over gravel in the yard and dumped over a dozen wheelbarrow loads along the swampy edge of the lower pond.  Also rototilled the first segment of the “barnyard”, spread grass seed and covered it all in straw and soaked it, even through it drizzled all day.  And we got some weeding and mowing done, and cleaned up a lot of the brush and old wood, which Jeff had cut into firewood-sized pieces.

    Before….
    and after!