Farm Fridays

Every Friday will feature a closer look at "farm life" on the farm in Virginia.  We'll start Farm Fridays showing you the barn, what it once looked like (a horror).

When we bought the farm in 2003, it was a total renovation project. We were excited, read naive, and had NO IDEA what we were getting ourselves into.  Most of our neighbors thought we would tear down the barn, as it was so far gone and an annex had already collapsed.  But we wanted an old house and an old barn to go with it.

Interestly enough, there are very few "old" barns left in the Shenandoah Valley as the Union soldiers burned most of them during the Civil War.  In my general area, there are two brick bank barns that I know of; they are here today only because they are brick and were not torched during the War.  Both now have landmark status.

Here is a "before" photo and you can see where we have already started putting new wood siding on the barn. You could literally see straight through the barn on three sides.  The fact that it had not fallen down is amazing.  The barn was built late 1890's and it has a concrete, not stone, foundation.

Look closely at the bottom part of the barn.  That is what the entire place looked like. There was an underground spring in the bottom on the barn and it was FILLED with years and years of cow manure.  If my horses had seen this place at this stage they would have left me!  

The barn had to have a new roof.  It took 100 gallons of paint to stain it.  And another interesting tidbit - we had to wait to have the barn painted that summer.  There was only one crane available in the area and  Steven Spielberg bumped me.  He was in town with Tom Cruise filming War of the Worlds. 

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of photos of this stage of the renovation.  It was truly remarkable seeing the transformation.  Next week we'll look at the finished product.  Big hint, the horses LOVE their new abode.