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04/07/2009: "Saving the Barn, Part Two"

Looking through the archives, it's hard to believe that this is only part two of saving the barn; it feels like I've been saving the barn for years! But, no, this is only the second post on that topic. I had intended for the next posting to be about a humorous little incident that was barn-related, but sadly, I seem to have lost the photos that go with it; my computer ate my photos.

I'll detour here for just a moment to tell you about the incident anyway. For as long as I've owned the farm, there have been two large 55 gallon plastic barrels parked in the NW corner of the barn. One was full, and the other nearly full; they were VERY heavy. The label on one of them said "Aqueous Ammonia, 355 pounds, Danger yada yada yada." For a long time I've wondered how the heck I was ever going to get rid of them. One day when Lou and I were walking through the barn I noticed that he had a large hand truck. "Hey," I said, "Do you think that your hand truck is sturdy enough to handle one of those barrels upstairs?" "Probably," he said. And that was all that we talked about it; I filed it away, thinking it would be one of those someday projects that we would tackle together. I finished my business (which was barn repair, see below), and went home.

The next day I got an email from Lou: "Need Direction." Uh-oh, I thought, as I opened it. It turned out that Lou decided to get those barrels out of the barn alone, and in the process one fell off the hand truck (the barn threshold at that point did not have a ramp, and was about a foot off the ground). This caused a small split in the barrel. So, now the barrels really were a priority! I decided that the best way to handle it was to get some 5 gallon buckets, and pump out the barrel's contents and take the buckets to the Hazardous Waste drop-off in Oregon City. I called up the local bakery, and to my immense surprise they had 20 extra buckets to sell me! Talk about manifesting what you need... I picked them, and on the last farm trip Lou and I pumped out the barrel (well, siphoned out the barrel, really). Now here's the humorous part: I expected aqueous ammonia to be clear, like the stuff you get at Safeway. Not this stuff: it was greenish brown. And it only had a faint smell of ammonia. To tell the truth, we looked at each other and said "Is this COW PEE?" I still don't know what it was, exactly. The haz-mat folks tested it; they said it wasn't particularly dangerous, mildly alkaline, probably a disinfectant... but in the back of my mind I still wonder whether we have gone to immense effort and trouble to carry cow urine from a farm to the hazardous waste facility. That's modern agriculture at it's finest, I tell you.

OK, back to the barn. Lou called my attention to a central post in the barn that seemed to be splitting. I had noticed this last summer; what is happening is that the north side of the barn is sinking a bit, and this pulls on the roof to the north, and the roof is fastened to the edge of the post, pulling it north, causing a split. If it pulls too far, the whole center of the barn will fail and fall inwards. I got some plates from Home Depot, and did my human spider imitation up 12 feet above the barn floor, screwing screws with one hand while hanging on for dear life with my other hand (thank goodness, my wife hardly ever reads this blog, do you, honey?). I think that I got it strengthened significantly with four plates, two on each side (see photo at top of post).

Meanwhile, Lou has been working inside the barn on rainy days. He dismantled some of the old poultry caging, and recycled some of the lumber into hand rails and safety fencing so that someone working upstairs is much less likely to step out into space.



Not content with just that bit of safety-related work, he has also been addressing the root cause of the post-splitting problem: the poor foundation of the barn on the north side (though, to tell the truth, the south side isn't any better). He put up some of the cribbing that Nate and I cut last year, and lifted the NW corner a little bit.



A few weeks back I crawled up under the north side of the barn and looked at the foundation; there's some serious work that needs to be done there. Much of the north side of the barn is resting on short posts that are perched on those square 12"x12" concrete supports commonly used in deck construction! Yes, a multi-ton barn on a clay slope is supported by dinky little bits of concrete... small wonder that it is settling into the mire.



And those are the good supports... then there are the ones with bricks under them...



... or the posts that appear to be resting on another piece of wood, which is rotting away.



It looks like I'll have to excavate out holes, build larger square forms, put reinforcing mesh in the forms, mix concrete and haul it up under there. How big do they have to be? Dunno, but they're gonna be bigger than 12"x12", that's for sure. Probably at least 24"x24".