Hay Storage the Walls and the Roof.

So after putting the posts in the ground and then waiting overnight we arrived bright and early to add on the floor and the roof of our little hay storage barn. Of course that sounds so neat and tidy, but in reality we didn't really have a plan. What we did have was a bunch of wood from the old barn that was stored under a tarp on the old pool deck, an impact driver, a level and a chainsaw.

So we would make a plan, pull out the boards we needed, measure them and then the fucking fun started. Now some of you might remember our adventure with the chicken coup where we brought down our portable generator to make cuts and run power tools. This time we decided that took too damn long, so we cut the boards to length with the motherfucking chainsaw.

You know, like well rounded adults do.

Anyway, since I didn't plan any of this and the hay is growing in the fields, I ran into a problem. None of the old boards from the barn were pressure treated. So in order for them to you know, not rot into the earth like all the previous structures I had to treat them with something. So grabbing the can of preserver I used on the log uprights I started to treat the underside of all the boards. Because once the base boards were down I couldn't reach the bottom of them.

So then the entire project turned into one giant race, where I ran around treating each side of the board before I lost access to it forever. This involved not just treating the bottoms, but also doing the sides and tops of the base boards, and then the bottom and sides of every floor board we laid down. Also, I can assure you, after all that, that cedar stain deck and fence preserver does not really get you high.

At all.

Which was almost but not quite disappointing, because during this paint-a-thon we hit major problem number two. Which is that decade old barn boards made out of oak are as hard as a rock. Or diamonds or someshit. Not only did we have to predrill all the holes in each and every board we would be screwing together, we also lost TWO motherfucking drill bits along the way. Also I learned that if you absentmindedly grab the drill bit after it's done drilling through two inch think oak floor beams, you will burn the ever loving shit out of your hand. Through your glove.

Just take my word on that one will you?

In fact, considering that I am talking about inhaling stain fumes and cutting up lumber with a chainsaw, just- just take my word on all of this.

Don't try this at home is what I am saying.

Moving along, after much swearing and getting stain everywhere, we finished the floor and moved on to the roof. Luckily we still had some left over boards from the chicken coup roof that were just right to go onto this project. Unluckily however was the act of getting them the fuck up there. See, when I cleaned off the site, I was just worried about clearing out enough old barn debris that I could get the holes dug and move around the thing. Except I kinda omitted thinking through a few things. Like ladder clearance. So while the boards could be got up the ladder without death, it took some, ah, creative energy. And by that I mean we did that thing where you try to keep all your weight on one side of the ladder so the damn thing won't fall over on you halfway through. So, it was an adventure.

Then there was the simple matter of trimming the logs off to the correct height. Well for me it was simple because Scott was the one doing it. For him it was terrible. Probably. But in the end we got them all trimmed up and nobody died and the tops didn't fall and crush anybody even though the chickens were all around us watching and muttering things in chicken that I didn't understand.

Then we put the roof boards up and after that it was too late to keep working even though we had hoped to get the metal roof on but that's just life so what the fuck ever. Then we went to visit my grandma and I hung out with my favorite nephew and we went down to the big ol' river that runs through the mountains behind her house and threw rocks in the water until it got too dark and the super no fun rest of the adults made us come back inside.

Because sometimes, life doesn't get any better then that.

Sometimes.

Brush Clearing and the Fence of Thorns.

After spending, oh about a week in denial of all the branches and trees down around our place, we finally loaded up the chainsaw and went out to tackle it.

It wasn't that bad.

No really.

Scott would cut up the main trunk with the chainsaw and I would drag the smaller branches away. Except that I didn't really have anywhere to put them. Then Scott was all like, why don't we make a brush fence. Since we still have a row of old fence posts up along the road, this was a good idea. It got the brush out of the woods, and also made a nice barrier.

And it was fun as hell. I quickly became obsessed with it, to the point that Scott stopped helping me entirely because I kept redoing his sections and just went to load firewood and rail fence logs into the truck.

I entered a zone that day.

I was in brush fence zen. It did not matter how far I had to drag those limbs. All that mattered was the fence. The perfect loose crazy branches were held up away from my side of the fence by the posts. That way I could weave them into sturdy impassible barriers. That fact that I was taking something that most people were just piling up and burning and getting to play adult fort time. Really.

It was like when I was a kid making little buildings and forts out of sticks, except that now I am an adult and I can lift a shit ton more and have access to power tools and axes and shit. It was like stick fort time plus a thousand.

While Scott quietly did the real work, gradually moving away from me as he went, an idea hit me. An idea so pure, and so wonderful that I had to pause just to revel in it's sheer magnificence.

Imagine the scene. There I am standing in the forest on a cool winters day, with sticks in my hair, looking for things to go in my brush fence. And then I see it. All those multiflora rose plants I cut but never removed.

Oh no, your thinking. She didn't.

I did.

It was a process. Each branch had to be carefully removed from it's thorny, spiky fellows and then walked up along the fence and interwoven into the branches. Oh, you could get through my fence. You could force your way through it, but I wasn't going to make it easy for you.

About the time I was adding in the additional vertical supports Scott suggested we stop for the day. So we put the firewood away and laid out the rails for out split rail fence and put the tools away. Cause you know, stop for the day doesn't mean you stop working. It just means you stop working for the most part. Or you go work inside.

Look language is kinda tricky like that okay?

The important thing here is that for a whole day I got to play super brush fence fort time like I was motherfucking twelve. Even though I but the road trimming maintenance guy is gonna hate me so hard. So very, very hard.

Eh. Worth it.

So very, very worth it.

Chainsaws and No Adult Supervision.

After digging all of the murderous angry fence post holes, it was time for everybody's favorite part- getting the fence posts. This involves grabbing the chainsaws, starting up the truck and driving into the back part of our thirty acres to cut them down like goddamned lumber jacks.

Awesome Lumber jacks.

Let me state right now, right here, that chainsaws are the shit, you guys. We took down trees like beavers that had been on steroids for a number of years and had just snorted their very first line of cocaine. The chainsaw was all like, oh you don't want this tree here anymore? SHAPOW! It's gone. Oh you need these branches cut off? SHABLAM! It was like if old timey lumberjacks had suddenly been given a god mode.

So we took the posts up to the garden, after nearly loosing a few of them off the back of the truck because nothing can ever be easy, treated the bottoms and placed them in the holes. That was the easy part. Because next we had to level them and tamp the dirt the dirt back down.

How do you tamp the dirt back down?

If you guess drag out the stupid heavy motherfucking pry bar and use the blunt end to repeatedly hammer the earth with my blistered hands you would be right!

Also Mr. Sun decided he was no longer going to pussyfoot around here anymore and that's pretty much how I got sunburn. Oh and before you go on about how I should have been wearing sunscreen, I was wearing sunscreen. And I reapplied it every two hours. It's just that I have the same skin as Edward Cullen except instead of sparkling I just loose all ability to repel sunlight. Which is to say, not like Edward Cullen at all because I am a real vampire.

What was I saying?

Oh yeah, the garden. Anyway we also placed the top rail on the opposite side where we had already gotten the posts up and the wire on. We just used zip ties to attach the wire, which I'm hoping won't come back to bite us in the ass because I have no idea how much outside/weather/sunlight a zip tie can take before it dies. Which probably means that the zip ties are vampires too.

In fact we were so productive we decided to bridge the drainage ditch that lead to the chicken coup.

Bridge it with chainsaws that is.

Okay first we took some old wood that used to be hideous planter thing and placed it down across the ditch to form the framework, followed by us scrounging for boards to lay across it to walk on. We screwed them down and surveyed our work. But there was a problem. The boards were all different lengths. How did we solve this problem?

If you guessed using the goddamned chainsaws instead of walking all the way across the lawn to the tool shed and dragging out a more appropriate tool, you'd be right!

Which is why we probably shouldn't be allowed to use chainsaws without an adult present.

But that bridge looks damn sweet you guys.

Damn Sweet.

Fencing the Garden the Manly Way

After tearing out the lower garden fence so we could widen the driveway and ditch it, plus moving the garden up the hill a good bit we kinda realized we are going to have to put the fence back in a some point. Well, we decided not to just put the crappy metal T posts back in, but instead that we wanted a real fence.

If you have ever done a project like this you will realize that the early planning stage is where you can let your dreams soar free, before the second stage of planning, which is where reality usually shows up and slaps you repeatedly in the face. But considering it didn't dawn on us that we might want to replace that fence, until oh, last week, we had no budget, no planning and no reality. What we did have however, was chainsaws.

Manly chainsaws.

And the pickup truck. And trees. So that is what we did. We drove the pickup down to the back, quickly picked out a few trees, and cut them down. We cut the branches off threw them in the back of the pick up and used the bed to measure them to length and boom. Nine fence posts at ten feet tall, leaving a neat six feet that will be above ground. BOO YA. I cannot convey the speed at which we did this, with were like machines, it took less than an hour from start to finish.*

Digging the holes on the other hand, that was a bitch. We used a post hole digger and a pry bar. The the post hole digger was just there mainly to remove the dirt. Taking turns we would ram the pry bar into the hole over and over again to loosen up the rock hard clay at the bottom. The clay hated us. Deeply. Usually once we thought everything was going well we would hit a huge rock. There are only three options when you hit a huge rock.

1. Pry it out if the earth with the pry bar. That is, if you can find an edge. And if the hole is not too deep. And if the rock is not too big.

2. Bash the rock into smaller pieces with the pry bar. This only works on sedimentary rocks. Also it will make your arms hurt. A lot.

3. Give up and move the damn hole somewhere-the-fuck-else.

Needless to say we did a lot of rock bashing. But we didn't have to move any holes so Scott's spacing was not thrown off. We coated the bottoms of the posts below ground level with wood preserver/poison and shoved them in the ground.

We haven't leveled and placed them all yet, we got rained out, and we still have to put in the gate section, but really this project went fairly well. We did not remove the bark on the fence posts, which I am hoping will not come back to haunt us, although I have seen fence posts done both ways. So I dunno. All in all though, this was the fucking manly way to make fence posts that's for goddamned sure.

Nothing like a little working in the garden with chainsaws.

Really, I think that's how all garden work should be done from now on.

* Because we are AWESOME! And coordinated.