Farmer Doug has decided to try his hand at highlighting our farm! Please enjoy his ode to our old peg barn.
There stands an old Barn on our farm that is quite a fixture. This barn is an old peg barn, and even though we’re unsure of the year it was built, I sure bet if it could talk it would have some great stories to tell. When we came to look at the farm before making a decision to buy, we got to look through this barn and all we could think about was how awesome would it be if this thing was fixed back up. We could tell it had some rain and weather damage in certain areas, but with my history of being a carpenter early in my life I thought to myself "this can be fixed with a little time." Shortly after looking at the property, we decided to buy the farm so we could continue our farming journey. As we all know when buying a new property, many other things have to be done and projects like the barn would be down the list of priorities and also for what we were going to use it for it I thought "it'll work just fine for now."
This barn had a shelter that connected the barn to a silo which still stands right beside it, this was at one time a feed room area so the silage in the silo could be drop down into that area to be used for livestock feed. Once the dust settled from getting moved in, we then decided to start taking a closer look at the barn. After looking real close, we noticed that the covered area that connected the barn and silo was in really bad shape. I made the decision that the covered area would just be better if it was torn out so I could have better access to the side of the barn that was damaged so I could start figuring out how I was going to start repairing it. Once I got everything torn out and cleaned, it was time to start the repairs. But, life happens and guess what? All the barn repairs had to be put on hold again. Now let us skip forward to the spring of 2022 (everyone remembers) the 4 days of 60-80mph wind gust that we had here in Kentucky. The meteorologists were calling it a land hurricane.
On the 2nd day of the four I was at the house and just happen to be outside talking to Carrie on the phone when I heard an awful crash. I looked towards the barn, and I said, “Carrie I think part of our barn just got ripped apart.” Sure enough, I drove down to the barn and found one whole front corner laying out in the barn yard. The next morning, I had already made some calls and arrangements to see about getting this thing fixed.
Let’s move ahead 10 hours. I was in the goat shed doing my nightly milking and the wind was blowing so hard I was starting to get concerned about the shed I was in and moments later and huge gust of wind came through and I watched 80% of the roof on the barn just roll up like a carpet and blow off into our livestock pasture. More phone calls were made the next day because at this point without a roof and one whole corner gone this barn was becoming rather unstable. I was waiting for the whole thing to collapse, but it still stood strong.
After a few weeks had passed, we were able to repair the corner that blew out and the roof. Unfortunately, we couldn’t repair the damaged corner with pegs again, but at least we were able to save it. The three quarters of the barn that handled the storm still have their original structure and pegs.
I love showing people the old construction. I continue to do minor repairs with posts and exterior boxing, but we are close to having it complete as far as repairs go. Last year, I added two farrowing pens for the pigs, and a nice big area to milk and store feed. We will continue to add things like stalls and lofts to better serve us and our needs.
Wonderful story. I loved this