Life On Liberty Creek Farm

A 150 year old find!

2009-05-09T19:54:00.010-05:00

One day Kyle said "here I have something for you" and handed me a well worn and rusty horseshoe. They found several of these in the walls of the barn as they tore down the walls. He gave me one and they put the rest of them back in the walls as they rebuild the walls. This shoe had to have come from a horse that was used at the time they built the barn (150+years). It will hang in a place of honor in the barn.

After the walls were rebuilt, drain tiles were placed around three sides of the barn. The white pipe in the picture is the tile.

Stone were placed over the tile to add to the drainage. The barn sits near a large spring not far from Liberty Creek that runs through the center of the farm.

There was lots of outside work but there was just as much going on inside. A new floor that covers the entire upper level of the barn was put in and many support beams had to be replaced. Some of the new support beams came from a dairy barn (built in 1916) that was on the property and was taken down before the house was built. Walnut was a common wood used in that barn but then walnut likes to grow here so why not!

Denny is putting in the new windows, they make the windows themselves, back at their shop.

WHAT IS THAT GUY DOING?

He is working on the inside of one of the windows at the peak of the barn (don't think those will get washed very often).

A close fit!!! The dirt floor on the lower level had to be dug out and replaced with gravel. They made the one lower level doorway just large enough to get the "Bobcat" through.

Mortar and Stones

2009-04-24T19:55:00.009-05:00

A close up view of the hoist that had to be built to move the stones and mortar. The materils are placed in the red pan and then hoisted up to the work area.

Work continues on the upper level of the barn. Here is the hoist again.

Almost done with the south wall.

Just about to finish the rebuilding of the stone wall. The white tent is being used to store the dry mortar.

The last stones are being put in (a view from inside the barn) place. Yeah!!

Rebuilding continues

2009-03-28T20:13:00.007-05:00

Iron beams were inserted into the wall to re-enforce the wall and upper level floor.

Lower large doorway and frame work. All of the bracing is still in place as the walls are being rebuilt.

Lower portion of the South wall is rebuilt. Two door ways one small one and one large enough to get the bobcat into.....more on that later.

Break time on a beautiful fall day!

Time to rebuild

2009-02-15T17:39:00.007-06:00

Most of the south wall has been removed and lots of braces are in place. This is a critical time, so hope it stays up right!!

The rebuilding started with making a wooden form so a cement foundation could be poured.

Here you see the foundation has been poured.......just watching the cement dry, pretty exciting !!!!

The first stone goes in place as the south wall is being reconstructed.

The walls come down!!

2009-01-26T19:28:00.007-06:00

The supports are in place and now part of the wall will be knocked down stone by stone. Because of the large crack and bulge on the south wall much of the wall had to be removed.

Click on picture to enlarge

The walls at the top part of the barn are about one foot thick. The middle portion of the walls are a foot and a half and at the bottom two feet thick.

WOW!

Stablization begins

2009-01-12T19:42:00.018-06:00

The entire barn was wrapped with cables. Thc cables were used to straighten and pull together the barn.

click on pictures to enlarge

The cables stablized the barn so that restoration work could be done.

Wooden bracing on the outside helped to stablize the barn and the scaffling went up.

The foot of one of the outside braces.

The old and the new window frames.

The bright colored mortar is the results of tuck pointing. The old loose mortar was removed and replaced with new mortar.

The set-up begins

2009-01-08T11:10:00.011-06:00

Oh! No they are setting up camp, tent and all. Actually the tent is for the big and I do mean big bags of mortar mix.

A semi-truck parked on the edge of the road and down the driveway came this little machine carrying bags of mortar mix. This may not look like much of a machine but it is carrying 3000 lbs of mortar mix per bag!!

This is only a few of the bags of mortar mix. The total amount delivered was about 50,000 lbs of dry mortar mix and almost all of it was used. I wonder if they are going to use any stones in this project? Guess we'll wait and see.

Here they come!

2008-12-21T20:02:00.014-06:00

On a bright October morning they came down the hill like a train. Four trucks and trailers. They were loaded with every thing from a cement mixer to a microwave oven.....yes.

Bender Builders, Inc., we soon called them Denny and the boys, seven of them when they were all working on this project. Denny is the owner and his son Kyle is the stone mason. This is the second of the big trucks and a trailer load of things.

A trailer load of scaffolding and the mortar mixer (boy did that mixer really get used)! More about that later.

The bobcat that could do anything or I should say many things. You'll see it in action later on.

The work begins

2008-12-10T20:04:00.006-06:00

The first thing that had to be done was remove the dirt ramp to the barn. A great deal care had to be taken to prevent a rock that was being dug out from falling the wrong way and hitting the barn. The rock could have caused stones in the barn to be pushed out and the side of the barn might have given way and we would have had a really big pile of rocks. Eric is a real artist with that machine and no damage was done to the barn.....Whew!

Yes we have lots of rocks dirt!!!!

More treasures found in the limestone barn.

2008-12-09T20:00:00.003-06:00

This is a winlas it is a rope hoist. It could be used to move many things in the barn by pulling on the rope and gave them lots of leaverage.

Here are a few grain bags that were left in the barn for probable 30-40 years. They have some holes in them and many of them have patches on them. Guess you didn't throw them out when they got a hole in them, you just sewed on a patch.

A few things that were left in the barn.

2008-12-09T19:13:00.007-06:00

Gee I wish we hadn't tossed so many unwanted stones in the basement of the barn a few years ago.

Hay forks and some track. The forks were used to pick up a bunch of hay. The horses would pull on the rope and the hay in the forks was raised up into the hay mow. There was a track in the peak of the barn that ran the full lenght of the barn so the forks could be moved to different parts of the hay mow.

A close up of the trolley that was used to move the forks along the track.

These could be lowered and made a great swing, if you didn't mind a rather hard seat. You could swing in the hay mow and jump off into the pile of hay.

Sounds like fun to me!

A look inside the limestone barn before the work begins!!

2008-12-04T16:53:00.006-06:00

The hay loft has fallen down and things are looking kinda bad. The hay loft was only on the east half of the barn and fell down about six years ago.

These are some of the orginial beams, they were hand-hewn. This is the way the beams were cut a hundred and fifty years ago. Also note, no nails back then, just wooden pegs to hold things together.

This close up view shows the uneven roughness of the beams, that were hand-hewn.

Lots of work to be done!!!

2008-11-29T19:09:00.012-06:00

The south wall of the limestone barn has a hugh crack and is bulging out about 8 inches at the top. This was created because over the years water leaked down the north side of the barn where the drive in ramp is located and as the freezing and thawthing took place it pushed the opposite side (south) out causing the large crack and bulge.

Other cracks and stones have been displaced.

The wood on the exterior has deteriorated.

The BIG decision, what to do with a 150 year old barn??

2008-11-28T21:01:00.008-06:00

We have owned the farm that the limestone barn was built on in the 1850's for about 10 years. Six years ago we build a house after removing a granary, a dairy barn (1916 era) and house, this left only the limestone barn as part of the original farm.

This fall we made the big decision that the barn was just to much a part of the history of this land to let it fall down. Finding someone to do this kind of work was not easy, several contractors were found that could restore barns with limestone foundations but they didn't restore barns that were built totally out of limestone. Finally a contractor was found that could do the work.

The restoration of a limestone barn

2008-11-27T16:49:00.006-06:00

This is my first post in the restoration process of a 150 year old limestone barn, on Liberty Creek Farm.