Barn organization halfway point
While I've been playing
in the garden and Bradley's been building things, Mark has faced the
most difficult job on the farm --- organizing the barn.
I believe in being
honest on our blog, but sometimes you just don't need to see the worst case
scenario. So there are no before photos that go with this
post. Suffice it to say that for five years, only a small portion
of the barn was waterproof, and that area had no solid walls 
on which to hang shelves and
tools. As a result, everything in the barn was piled in a mass
right in front of the doors.
A new
roof opened up
exciting barn area, but didn't do anything about the jumble of
machinery, tools, and so forth that had built up in the aisle.
For the last few weeks, Mark has been dealing with years of neglect,
which mostly consists of putting things on shelves and nails. I'd say
he's about halfway done (or maybe even more), with the result that we
can walk into the barn again!
The long term goal is to have
room to stable the golf cart and lawn mower in a nearly clear central
aisle, with the sides being split up into work and storage areas.
We may eventually build lofts too, either just for fun, for guest
quarters, or for biomass stockpiling (aka hay lofts). There's
certainly plenty of vertical area to take advantage of in this old
tobacco-drying barn.
I just thought you
should know why Mark's been quiet about his projects lately --- he's
been slaving away on an unphotogenic task that no one else wants to
tackle. Thanks, honey, for perservering!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I've never had to store everything in one spot, but trying to keep our garage organized has been a constant task. I'm not quite sure why that is either... A couple of months ago I went through and organized all kinds of stuff, got rid of even more, and made enough room to actually use the garage again. It had been needed for a good year or more.
The barn is looking good!