Last Spring, we said goodbye to our old poultry barn.   It has always been called the poultry barn because that is what it was named on our deed.  We believe that the original homeowners used to raise a lot of chickens in this old barn.  It was built in the early 60’s.

Unfortunately, it has been falling apart.  It would cost a small fortune to try and stabilize it.  And to be honest, we haven’t been able to find a good use for the building other than just storing leftover weird junk.  It floods all the time and was just a big mess.

So we made the decision to take it down.  And we could reuse a lot of the materials in other projects.  So our friends said they could bring it down and they started early last spring.  It was amazing to see how easy the old barn came down!  They started early morning and by afternoon if was pretty much a big pile of rubble!

Part of the problem was the high level of MUD everywhere.   We have a lot of spring flooding each year and we are trying to create plans to contain some of this flooding.  Some of the effort is helping, but it’s still pretty wet around the homestead in the Spring!

Once the guys got most of the sheet metal off the barn, it totally started to collapse.  This building was really in bad shape and really unsafe.   We tried not to spend much time in there, especially during high winds or heavy rain!  

Once it was done, we sure had a HUGE pile of stuff!  Over the next couple weeks, we would sort, burn and pitch a good deal of the materials as they were rotten and nasty.  All the cement blocks we would save for a lot of cool projects around the homestead.  And of course, all the metal sheeting is going towards new building and some cool ideas.  We had no idea of just how many cement blocks we would end up with!   A zillion!

It looks so weird now, to look out in the middle yard and see it so much more open and spacious.  It’s a lot cleaner now, but there are still a few piles of odds and ends that we hope to clean up this spring.  Got big plans!  We are hoping to reroof the sheep barn that is at the back of the old poultry barn.  That roof is in rough shape and we would like to save that building.

Around our place, cement blocks are about a dollar a piece.    We ended up with hundreds of blocks!  We used a lot of them to make resting places or to shore up some of the areas on the homestead.  My favorite is our redo of the fire pit area!  We made a lovely spiral that wraps around the fire pit.  Part of it is closer than the far area so that you can move in and out of the heat.  We are going to put some nice slab wood tops on the bench areas this year!  It’s going to be really cool.  

We also built a outdoor kitchen!  That was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to use it more this year!  And believe it or not, we still have a lot of the blocks left!  Going to be fun this year.