A Barn for Daisy-Mae

 
6/13/98 
Just two weeks before Christmas of 1987 I sketched  
a quick blueprint of what would become a decade- 
long project, a 24'x28' pole barn. Most folks would  
have bought the material before digging the holes.  
What little money I had was already designated for  
gifts; I had only a homesteader's patience, a  
carpenter's hand tools, and a firm belief that we do  
get what we need. My cow needed a new home!  
 
Perhaps I should have built the barn before bringing  
home the heifer six weeks earlier, but my wife was  
visiting southern relatives at the time and I wanted to  
surprise her. I swapped three hours of carpentry for  
the holstein/jersey cross and quickly threw together a  
small lean-to. Gin was certainly surprised when she  
returned to find a calf on a dog run in the back yard.  
Sharing the spot that is now garden was a rabbit  
hutch and a pig pen. 
 
As winter came and went, and money remained tight,  
Daisy kept growing. Making another barter deal with  
the farmer, I walked Daisy back down the hill to  
spend the summer in his pasture. I vowed that the  
barn would be built before I brought her back home. 
 
Too late, I learned of a free-for-the-taking, in-ground  
silo, built of pressure treated 6x6s and 2x6s, but  
knew the man who beat me to the deal. I asked him  
what he was going to do with the lumber and he said  
build an addition on his barn. I offered to help for  
some of the posts and midway through August of '88  
Gin and I cleaned out the holes and stood the posts  
up. I used the 2x10 walkboards from my scaffolding  
for the beams, not the last of my construction  
business' equipment to be sacrificed for Daisy's barn. 
 
The barn roof was only partially finished, with used  
steel from a roof job, when the first snowfall coated  
the pastures and I once again led Daisy up the hill.  
There was no siding on the barn except one corner  
where I had built a dirt floored pen. I hung scrounged  
carpets to keep out the cold wind that winter. 
 
A remodel job provided some plywood flooring for  
the hayloft during February of '89. I had been  
hauling hay weekly, I stocked up just before a major  
snowstorm closed the rough driveway to the barn. 
 
1989 was a year of beginnings. I started fencing in a  
pasture, began to add a feed room, started a second  
pen, built part of a new rabbit hutch/ worm bin  
combination along one wall, and had Daisy bred. We  
bought a piglet to replace the one that was butchered  
the fall before and put her in the barn even though  
the walls weren't totaly enclosed yet. The north wall  
was sided with a truckload of rough-cut pine from  
another barter deal; I built a wood chute into a  
friend's basement for it. There could have been  
enough to finish the job but I started a chicken coop  
with it also. I'd been taking care of a neighbor's  
poultry at his place for two years while he worked in  
the city, I'd learned enough about them to know I  
needed my own. 
 
The following year saw some of my many projects  
completed, but the barn building goes on to this day.  
There are still doors to build for the loft and batts to  
add to the siding boards, gutters to add to the eaves  
and painting. I want to build a cupelo to the roof so I  
can install a weather vane that was given to me last  
year. Maybe I'll finish the barn by the time our logs  
are ready for the log cabin.