Winter Reflections

left, a milking barn; center, future hay barn; right, hoop house

 

 

There were many cold days and nights this winter.  It seems that for weeks the only logical chore was to split cordwood for the night's and day's fire. On the few nice days we debarked eight tree trunk sections, 7 foot in length or so, and after cleaning them, painted them with a couple of coats of latex paint, and put them into holes set in concrete, two rows of four timber posts, salvaged deadwood from the Wallow Burn, all douglas fir of about 6 inch diameters -- except for one which is aspen, by mistake.  I assume it prefers to be a fir, like the rest of its cohort in utility.  Those nights were still freezing, so there is a frostbitten, broken layer of concrete around the poles at ground level.  No matter; the holes are deeper than two feet, and filled with strong concrete gravel mix all the way down.

Frostbitten concrete around a pole setting. meh

My friend Laura is an architectural genius; she has pioneered many applications of 1/4" galvanized welded steel cattle fence panels by erecting half-pipe rows of these; resulting in semicircular tunnels of welded mesh, strong enough to resist bending and maintains its strength when bent and held in place. So far she has used this method to construct a hoop house for vegetable gardening, a chicken coop and covered yard, and a goat milking shed and shade barn.  The barn that we have been setting poles for, between snows, will be covered in the same way; and indeed those panels are already in place.  Only lacking the covering layers, the floor, the loft, a few more elements...the work goes on.