Let it Snow!!!

Here is a shot of the home place from the South. We have at least a foot of snow and it has been coming down steadily for the last two or three hours. We had one last delivery to make on the 18th of last week and not knowing what to expect we postponed and it came around to bite us. The farm is located about 11 miles SW of Chehalis and about 10 miles from I5. Boistfort Road has been a certified disaster since Thursday. My wife and I did jet up to Olympia Friday, and made the Tacoma drop on Saturday afternoon. Right now we have one more delivery to get up to Seattle. Scheduled for tomorrow, we are in a holding pattern to try to keep everyone safe. Once on I5 the going is not too bad but between the Farm and there is a real challenge. We deliver in 16 foot box trucks that drive like a sheet of plywood in the wind so we have been very hesitant to commit to the trip North.


On the bright side. The apples that mysteriously clung to the trees for so long have created a natural bird feeder for every overwintering song bird in the area. A neighbor asked me the other day why the apples had stayed on the trees so long. Now I know.

OUCHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Here's an x-ray of my mashed left thumb. On day two of the floor replacement after removing all the old flooring we began replacing floor joists. While holding a new joist in place with my left hand I took a mighty swing with a three pound hammer and missed the mark, hitting myself square on the thumb. It is the consensus of the medical establishment that "wow, you really did a good job on that".






Terry has been a real trooper and has led the effort to replace the rotten joists and make sure that everything will line up as the barn is lowered back onto its new foundation. Seen here he is clamping a new joist onto the existing joist. We sistered these together where we were able and replaced those joists that where badly rotted.

Darren too, our farm manager's husband, has been instrumental in making sure the old girl is ship shape. This photo is a view from the ground, up through the floor of the elevated barn where we had removed rotten flooring.

Despite pouring rain, temperatures in the teens, and 6 inches of snow, these guys stuck it out and all the joists are replaced as of this afternoon. They will be back for one more day to button up the details, then CDI will be back on Monday to lower the barn back down. A big thumbs up to you both.

Forming and Pouring the Walls

On Tuesday morning Mike and Jason from MDK showed up and tied in more rebar and set the forms for the perimeter walls of the foundation

Wedensaday they poured the walls without mishap or fanfare.

By the end of the day everything was in place.

This morning the guys pulled in the drive and removed the form boards and started bolting down the mud sill. The beams are being drilled right now and by the end of the day the structure will be ready to drop back in place. We will let the walls set up while the well meaning and under skilled crew at Boistfort Valley Farm replace rotten floor joists and repair any damage to the floor structure. We should be setting the barn on its foundation somewhere around the fifteenth. Then we will start in on the roof.

Pouring Concrete for the Footings

The crew from MDK pulled in the drive early this morning and went over the trenches for teh footing, making sure everything was up to snuff. I don't know how many of you have had the oppurtunity (?) to participate in a concrete pour, but they always generate a bit of excitement for me. For me it's like the menu on the day of a party that you have been planning for a long time. I start out by second guessing everything. Then I order more concrete. By the time the truck arrives I have convinced myself that there will not be enough. Sometime midway through the process I realize that I have definitely ordered way too much material, and when its all said and done the leftover usually fits in a wheelbarrow. Today was no exeption.

I met early with Jason, the lead man from MDK, and we decided that we would add 4 yards to the original order to compensate for the thicker footings I insisted on. Half way through the process Jason told me we could finish the remaining footings when we poured the wall because "this thing is eating concrete". When the last footing was poured the remaining concrete from the truck formed three piles each about the size of a sleeping lap dog.




Here we were able to pour concrete directly from the truck into the trenches for the eave end walls.












Not the case under the barn, where limited clearance required the use of a pumper truck. Here, Mike Steiger directs the flow of concrete from the three inch hose which is being fed from the truck about 30 feet away.












In this photo we see one of MDK's men kneeling in prayer; thankful that everything has gone so well.








And there you have it. The footings have been poured and the rebar and anchor bolts set to accommodate the forthcoming stem walls. The crew will be back tomorrow to set the forms for the walls, and on Wednesday they will pour and finish those. These guys are real pros.

Barn Project Ready For Concrete

The contractor dug and scratched; leveling the ground under the old barn and digging for footings. They brought out a mini excavator and a dandy little bulldozer. I think the operator was a little nervous working around the cribbing supporting the barn. He had to pay attention to the cribbing, the I beams, and the barn suspended ten feet over head while carefully leveling the soil to grade and trenching for the footings.

After the footings where dug they set the rebar in place and made off for the long weekend. They have scheduled concrete for Monday. Lots of folks driving out the Valley have started to wonder what is going here. Boistfort Valley is about four miles wide and fourteen miles long with Boistfort Rd running north/south. Our farm is located at the northern end of the Valley so most folks living to the south pass by to get to town. Having this thing jacked up is a real head turner but so far we have only had one, make that two stop bys specifically to ask what we were doing. I should add here that nothing would surprise my neighbors at this point.

When my wife and I first moved down here we took over a farm that was overgrown with blackberries. There were old fences run everywhere; along the roads and around the buildings. Blackberries and morning glory had all but taken the place over. It was a bank repo, and so the previous owners had taken everything of value, including most of the light fixtures, leaving bare wires hanging out of the walls and ceiling. I remember my surrogate grand mother standing in the driveway crying when we first brought her here, "Oh Michael, what have you done!" But all I could see was potential. I have been blessed with some of the best, hardest working friends in the world. I called in every favor and spent what little money we had left after buying the place getting the fields in shape. I do not think the neighbors knew that I had done this kind of farming before we moved here. I had an established market and was anxious to reunite after a two year sabbatical from agriculture.

This area is mostly commodities and dairies. I am sure our patchwork operation, which more closely resembles a ridiculously large garden than it does a typical row crop operation, raised more than a few eyebrows. I distinctly remember a lot of "good lucks" and "hope you make its". The bottom line is that our customers where very happy to have us back, and what started as a five acre field in 2003 has grown to over thirty acres this past 2008 season. And the valley residents? They are awesome. They are quick to compliment us on our hard work and the beauty of the farm.

More on the barn after Monday.

A Barn Raising Boistfort Style

I signed with the contractor on the fifth of November and by the 13th a crew was here stocking steel beams and getting ready to raise the barn high enough to excavate under it with a mini. They started by getting down and dirty, digging by hand under the barn and creating enough crawl space to set large steel I beams in place to lift the structure. I caught this lucky chap in a rare moment of ecstasy while crawling with a short handled shovel below a historic barn, clearly overcome with the joy that accompanies meaningful labor. Marvelous.

After the initial hand digging the beams where jockeyed into position using a small boom truck. The beam you see pictured is one of four which run the full length of the barn and relieve the weight carried by the original 6x8 wooden beams used when the barn was built.

Next came the cribbing and lots more digging by hand while the team from CDI got ready to set the jacks and start raising the structure. Pictured in the fore ground at the corner of the barn is the 6x8 material used for cribbing the jacks. They are laid one on top of the like a game of Jenga in layer after layer as the jacks are set and reset.

This is the device used to control the jacks, each knob controls one jack, the dial indicates psi of the hydraulics, using this set of controls the operator is able to adjust the pressure and rate of lift individually or all at once. The barn went up about eighteen inches at a time. It was a totally unnerving experience to watch a structure of this size rise like that. I was surprised at the complete absence of creaking and groaning.

And VIOLA!!! Our barn is 10 feet off the ground.
The whole process took less than a week. The barn is supported by huge I beams, and the entire structure is braced and tied together using framing members and come alongs. CDI effectively bypassed all the structural components that existed in the barn and replaced them with carefully placed timbers and cables to create a secure box. Now the contractor comes in to do some more dirt work and set forms for the new foundation.

Boistfort Valley Farm Awarded Barn Grant!!!

In a letter dated March 20th from the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation we learned that we were one of eighteen recipients of the very first Heritage Barn Grants in the state of Washington. I remember the crazy timing of the grant deadline which coincided perfectly with the unprecedented flooding of December of '07. As a matter of fact some representatives of the program were due to come out and have a look at the barn on December fourth, one day after the South Fork of the Chehalis rose to record heights and filled our Valley with water. We had two feet of water in the house. My wife reminds me that they called just as the water began to creep through the vents in the floor and we were trying to arrange a rescue by boat off our front porch. When it rains it pours.

So. I wrote the grant while living in a rented house and negotiating with insurance companies over the loss of everything we owned. I have never written a grant before and after pleading with any and every person I thought could do a better job than I could I just put my shoulder to it and let the fact that we love this old barn, and are just naive enough to fix it speak for itself. This and the fact that we do live in an area of historic significance, as well as the fact that this really is a sweet old barn worth saving must have weighed heavily in the decision to grant us this opportunity. So what next? A party yo.

We invited customers and friends to the farm for a gourmet dinner, live music and hay rides. We served dinner to over 125 people cooked up by Brian a chef at Porta Fino in Olympia. It was an insane menu with grilled vegetables, herb rubbed lamb, local game hen, desert, local micro brew.....

All from within 50 miles of the farm. The music was outstanding and the company without compare. It was the best party I have ever been to. We also raised over three thousand dollars to help with our end of the matching grant for the barn. Then the work starts.......