Can I drop you a line...

So... building a barn requires an expensive transit level or... a bunch of dirt cheap(ish) poly rope and some pegs. Needless to say, ropes got the nod for this part of the project. In actuality, the Egyptians built the pyramids this way. After having experienced this myself, I'd say they were either very patient, very lucky or they &#$^%#& swore a lot! This is one of those places that a little time (ok alot) spent pays off in the end with a straight (more or less) building.


Time for a few introductions. This is Johny (yes I have kids), my tractor. Now, buying a used tractor is like buying a horse, you never really know how old it is, or if it will kick you when you bend down to pick something up. Needless to say, I've spent a bit of time correcting it's behaviour since I bought it. (You know you're in for it when: Since the guy at the farm dealership who sold it to me retired, everyone has been apologizing to me for it...sigh). Also, since it's a John Deere (was the colour too obvious a clue) it's has a few idiosyncrasies to begin with.

Stuck to Johny's butt is the cement mixer I bought, because... well I wanted a cement mixer, and I thought one that was tractor driven would be a good idea. Riiiiiiight... Apparently it was manufactured in Italy (ok, I tried hard to buy local but this late in the year I didn't have many options (in fact this was the only one I could get without waiting until spring). Now I don't speak Italian... and apparently the people that built it don't speak English... if the manual is any clue. Now, without being too cliché I think Italians know a thing or two about cement (isn't the leaning tower of Pisa made of it?) and by that extension, they should know about mixing it, and therefore cement mixers... where they seem to lack knowledge is with North American tractor attachments! It took 3 frikin' days to get this thing hooked up and working properly! There was a trip to the farm supply store (ok, maybe that was a John Deere thing, but anyway) in there and I had to involve 3 other people and some serious cutting tools (think chop saw) to make it work! Bleargh.

Now a post frame building (a.k.a pole barn, I guess I didn't mention I was building a pole barn, but anyway), requires posts, lots of them. In this case 24 to be exact. Now I probably went a little overkill here, but I'll be damned if it's gonna fall down in my lifetime, or the grandkids lifetime. The best bet for setting posts in the ground (to me anyway) is cement (now I remember why I bought a cement mixer). Unfortunately, cement carries with it a lot of
embodied energy, so from an environmental standpoint, it's not the best thing, however, there really isn't an alternative, unless you want the damn thing to move (no a floating barn is not an option). At least mixing on site with my own gravel and water (hauled by hand from the river no less!) lessens that as much as possible.

As of this writing, there are 8 post in the ground (16 to go dammit!) with each post requiring about 2 full mixers of cement, each load takes 1/2 a 40kg bag of cement, 30 shovels of gravel and 10 gallons of water, so that's 4+480+ 80...carry the 2...=1 fuckton of work!