Lou Ureneck's cabin in Maine

Lou Ureneck blogged about his cabin building on the New York Times and has moved his blog to it’s new home at MaineCabinBlog.com coinciding with his completion and move in to the space.  We’ve swapped emails from time to time during his building and I look forward to his notes, ideas, challenges, and sharing the world of a small cabin life.  So, as I wrote earlier, what do you call a colleague / friend / email correspondent / blog buddy?  “Neighbor” works well.

This week, Lou posted a few tiny cabin designs from a book he is reading and that led us to a discussion of “what’s next?” and for both of us, it’s a barn. Before I go on and talk about barn plans for Two Mile, I encourage you to visit both Lou’s NY Times blog and his new blog.

Two Mile Barn

I picked out this barn design before I began building the cabin.

My hope is to have both a nice work and storage space as well as a potential guest space in a carriage house loft.  I like the plans and their modular design, in practice, I could build the center module, and then add the lean-tos on either side and end as I need to expand.

Walnut Woods design by DJ Berg

A design like this won’t house large farm implements, but will over protection for the boat, the truck, and make a nice heated and predator-proof space for brooding chicks and a sick bay isolation area.  I had an estimate for nearly $20k to build this as a shell, interior work, electric and plumbing would be on top of that estimate.  I suppose it’s time to get a bid on the materials and see if I can carve out part of a summer and fall to build it.

When I first came to Two Mile, I thought the barn had potential to be rebuilt and restored.  In the late 1930′s and 1940′s, when barn builders put  thousands of these bards on farms, they didn’t do much foundation work or consider the frost heave.  This barn lists about 2 feet to the north.  It’s quaint and has some storage ability. There are days I think about fixing it up to make some shed like storage that would be 75 percent weather resistant.

The existing barn (2005 photo)

So maybe this spring, I’ll take another stab at the old barn, clearing out years of now-composted straw and manure and see if I can take advantage of what is there.

Times writer  Davey, shares:

“But the tale of the disappearing barn, a building whose purpose shifted, then faded away, tells a bigger story too, of how farming itself, a staple in this state then and now, has changed markedly since those writers drove through.”

It is easy to be swept in a nostalgia for older times. It is clearly true that rural life has changed.  The article also shares  some of the comparisons of ag life in Iowa from the ’30′s to today.  The WPA guide suggests Iowa had 221,986 farms in the 1930′s.  The Times articles quotes current USDA figures as  88,400 farms in Iowa today.  This suggests the average size of a farm has grown from 151 acres to 356 acres.

If farming has changed, has farm life changed?  The business of agriculture  is changing. Farm life may be changing less so.   The common descriptors of rural life — the enigmatic quieter, slower, peaceful time, still exits in rural living.

So we’re left with some memories, some remnants of the past, for example, fewer than 50,000 barns.

But maybe that’s okay.  Prior to settlement of the wild prairie and its conversion to farmland, their was a natural process that aided the tall grasses of the prairie like Big Bluestem and Little bluestem.  Wildfire, often started by lightening, would occasionally sweep through the open priarie, scorching most everything in its path, and leaving smaller numbers of visible plants, and a few remnants of once mighty trees.

And in the next season, the new growth would be stronger than the original.

Today’s  small farm dwellers may be  that new season of growth.

The more important order of business was to fish the ponds. After eight casts, I caught 5 bass, all about 6 – 8 inches, but I’ll take that as a good sign. All of them came from the little pond.

The idea of living off grid captures the imagination and spirit of many people. I don’t know how far off grid the farm will remain, but there is electricity run to the property and there is an older dug well with a pump. I emailed the local REC and asked for the power to be put in my name, only to find out the power is supplied by a large electric company on the eastern side of the state. So I emailed them and asked what information they needed to put the power in my name.

Since I don’t have an address, their reply was to give them the number from the face of the electric meter. easy enough, I took a photo on one of my tours.They set up power, went out to the property and found a blown fuse at the street, and then called me with some tips for updating the meter and the pole arrangement.Water is the second challenge. The old well has an interesting set up, with an electrical cord fished through the side of the concrete that runs to a pump. The cord is covered with overgrown grass and muck.I plugged in the cord and nothing happened, the electric meter didn’t spin and water didn’t pump. I pulled and fished the cord through the grass and found it was disconnected from another extension cord (rural electrical code) so I hooked them in and water flowed.

Today’s work included sweeping / scooping the old dusty hay from the hay loft, along with the bird droppings and some of the mud dubber nests from the rafters. I cut down some trees, cut some broken limbs, and began cleaning the dam of the large pond before we ran out of time and 2 cycle gas for the chain saw.

This was originally posted on my personal blog at www.digitalstoryteller.com