The slow death of a barn

A few more pictures of the old family farm as it waits out its final days.

The barn is a huge thing, an amalgamation of an 1860 horse stable and an 1870 barn linked by a large 1910 structure.  Much is too dangerous to enter, but a couple of pictures of some serious civil war era carpentry:

Old and new sections.  I really like how they dealt with sagging structural elements by just jamming a section of log in there....

This was assembled without nails I guess, lots of slots and wooden pegs.  The square chute projecting into the building has no purpose I can imagine.

Among other tasks we were pulling some heavy copper cable off the roofs of the barn.  It was attached to the numerous lightning rods.  A number of tactics were considered, none of which would have passed muster had our womenfolk been present.  Eventually we just hitched one end of the cable to my brother's pickup truck and drove.  The old barn shook and vibrated alarmingly but is still standing, its lean unaltered.

It was a fine day, my brother and I, each with a son working alongside of us.  We told a lot of stories of the old times and of our own growing up.  Given the greater maturity of our offspring we did not edit them as severely as in past versions.  We gathered up old steel and other metals for recycling.  It was well over 90 degrees, so we sweated together in harmonious fashion.  We hauled a truck load to the recycling center and got a payout of $182.

I think the young fellers learned a valuable life lesson.

People who remove copper wire from old buildings have an extremely viable business model.*


*although I would like to emphasize that we obviously had permission in this instance.