Restoration

This barn served many purposes, originally as the farm’s slaughterhouse and lately as a goat shed. We used the root cellar last fall to store a brussels sprout crop, harvested and stored in one day when a hard frost came in prematurely. Now we’re clearing out the hay pack from the main floor in order to do some structural work to insure the barn remains standing for the foreseeable future. We plan to repair, re-roof, and paint the barn, and, to answer the most frequently asked question about our plans, restore the “Bakie Farm” signage as is.

This is the largest barn on the farm. We call it the cathedral. The doors on the second floor open to the hayloft, the lower doors to the area where animals were stalled. The extension on the left side of the building was the vat room and the building to the right was a corn crib. Between the big barn and the corn crib was a silo that came down in a hurricane in the early 1950’s.

Here we’ve painted the doors into the main floor and decorated them for the barn dinner held in January 2019.

These doors, when opened, are the equivalent of a cathedral window looking out over the Hidden barn, the southern expanse of the farm, including Powwow Pond, and the White Cedar swamp. (The tiny house just visible here is gone.)

This was originally the corn crib but has served many purposes, most recently housing goats and chickens. Currently it is jacked up on blocks and the floor has been torn out. We’ll be setting new corner posts, installing a new floor, putting in additional windows, insulating and finishing to make this into a quiet, bright space to sit and meditate. Every farm needs one!

This Kubota 6800 was the first piece of equipment we acquired for the farm and it is a great machine! Here it’s parked beside the old Bakie Barn.

This is an impregnable chicken coop currently housing two Corned Rock roosters, four Corned Rock hens and one Black Asian hen. You can hear the roosters crowing all day long and well into the late afternoon. The electric fence was there when we first settled the birds into the coop. Now they range far and wide but always come back to the fort at night to roost.

Bakie Barn from Google drive by camera

Here’s the building, jacked up and with the old floor removed. Just starting the project.

Removed the old window, opened up and framed the south wall for new windows.

Opened up the east wall for a window.

Removed old cedar shakes and placed the second window in the east wall.

East and south walls stripped of shakes and new windows placed. Corners set on new footings.

Tyvec applied and windows trimmed out. Ready for siding.