A Couple of Farmers At Maple Lawn Farm: Barn, Fence and Grounds Restoration (Continued)

Pretty much every project we have tried to tackle at our new farm in Southwest Virginia has proven to be an opportunity for growth. If you read my journals, you understand what I am saying. I am trying to live life with the mindset that when things are difficult, don't fit our ideals, or out of our control that rather than feel like we are some how targeted "by the gods" as the object of their wrath, I am trying to learn to approach difficulties with the mindset that we are being presented golden opportunities for personal growth. "Growing" for me often resembles the struggles of an awkward teen. I wish I could approach it more gracefully and graciously but the good news is that I am still moving forward in spite of all my flaws!

We had a major, expensive break with the loader and Mike was able to trouble shoot, order the part and repair it himself. I was super proud of him. We got some estimates on fencing and decided that we could save a lot of money by doing the work ourselves. Definitely, we are not professionals, but the fence is going up and in the process, Mike and I are working side by side and enjoying the camaraderie of tackling such a major project and seeing it progress. The biggest issues are the things that we don't have the knowledge or the skills to tackle such as the heating system for the house (which was somewhat of a nightmare until we got that resolved back in late fall). At those times, we are at the mercy of contractors and finding someone to do the work and do it correctly is most difficult. There are plenty of folks who want to come in and have you hand over some money who will make all kinds of promises and claims of expertise, but when it comes down to receiving a job well done for good money paid out, we have experienced a great void of business owners with character in this region.

On the other hand, there has been one project which under other circumstances, Mike could have tackled but due to the height and slope of the barn roof, I refused to give him my blessing to attempt to make repairs or replace it. Thankfully, he agreed with me that the risk was not worth taking. However, not being able to approach that project ourselves has left us very vulnerable. We had one young man come in to repair the roof who ended up taking several hundred dollars from us and then disappeared without repairing the roof. We then decided to go ahead and replace the barn roof and had a contractor lined up to complete the project for us in January or as soon as the weather cooperated. Multiple calls to this contractor with him promising to come out and complete the job soon produced no results. We found another contractor who agreed to do the work but the cost was extremely prohibitive and their attitude left us wondering if we could even work with them. Finally, we found someone willing to do the work whom we felt had the skills and knowledge to do it right.

I'm not going to post the details of the week between start and finish of the barn roof, but will say that it was an extremely stressful week and we wondered if the project would get completed. About four inches of rain dumped on us with the barn partially open to the elements where the old metal had been removed. The contractor ran into issues with the old barn not being "square" and the metal having been ordered "precut". There were some other things that I won't go into on a public forum but by the end of the week. the old metal roof was replaced with beautiful, new, green, metal roofing which really helped to bring the restoration process to a new level. There are a few issues to address before the barn roof can be declared completely finished (a different ridge cap and possibly some silicone where screws were pre-drilled to name a couple), but for all intents and purposes, after a year long struggle, we finally have a new barn roof.