| FARM CONSTRUCTION |
Welcome to our farm construction page! As two quite hard headed people who wanted to do things "our" way and love building, we purchased raw land in 2003 and have been having a blast making a horse farm out of it! While the process is occasionally slow and frustrating since we do all the work ourselves, we enjoy it so much that the tradeoff is worth it. There is nothing quite like planning a farm from scratch in your mind and then watching it slowly take shape over the years. We have started on both a barn and log home and are not in a hurry to finish either, instead preferring to enjoy the experience and do things the way we always wanted to, mostly the old fashioned way. We truly enjoy keeping the old traditions alive, and don't mind the extra work that goes along with that in the building process. Our main purchase for the project was a semi load of raw white pine logs that we had shipped up from Southern Missouri to build our home. We spent a year just stripping the bark from them, and are now beginning to see a home take shape out of them! Below are pictures of the building process and the farm. |
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| The land before we started building, in 2003. I will get an updated picture soon from the same spot I was standing in for this picture.The horses would be grazing in what is now the arena, and I would be standing where the house is now being built to take this picture. |
| Travis digging post holes with Emmy the tractor while putting in our arena. We put in a 100 X 200 ft. riding arena back in March of 2005. I am standing at the treeline taking this picture, this shows the front of the property. |
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| Travis getting ready to unload Emmy, the tractor on the day we brought it home. That's Laura's favorite truck, Ol' Blue that hauled it home. |
| Laura & Emmy getting ready to blade the arena. Emmy is a very rare 1952 International Farmall Super M. We have since restored Emmy to almost new condition. |
These are pics of us starting the barn. Quite a project with no skid loader or hoist! That's Laura in the red shirt digging post holes, Travis in black on Little Red the Farmall Cub tractor, our friend Wes on top of my truck running the winch, and Laura's dad swinging the sledgehammer. Katie is in the middle of the barn in the first pic after we finished. |
| Travis on the porch...someone asked me recently if we would do it all over again the same way, and we wouldn't hesitate. We love how its turned out. (Larger Pic @ Bottom) |
| Travis and our good friend Jamie cutting oak from a neighbor's property to take to the sawmill. We have a sawmill and are cutting most of our own lumber for the barn and the house, and some of these red oak logs have been cut into beams for the open ceiling in the home. Still can't figure out how in the world we procured this backhoe for this! It was a fluke, that's for sure! LOL |
| Right, loading logs on a trailer to go to the sawmill. Above, Travis and Emmy hauling logs out of the woods. |
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| Travis and Emmy brushhogging the pasture on a late summer evening. |
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| These three pictures show Travis and Laura stripping logs for the log cabin. We built a platform on which we would roll the logs to strip them. It worked quite well, but seemed to be neverending work considering how many logs we had! Have you ever decided to start a project and were really ambitious about it at first simply because you didn't know what the hell you were getting yourself into? We are in that stage in these pics, The holy shit pics come later. LMAO. |
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| A snapshot of the roundpen we built in 2003. This is the same way we built the arena, we really like the rustic look of this type of fencing. |
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| And a picture of almost exactly the same spot, taken off the front porch of the house, showing the farm as it is today. |
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| A neat pic of the cabin from up the hill. |
| The cabin being roofed. |
| The cabin shell just put on the foundation, no stain on the logs, etc. This is pretty much the "Oh Shit" phase where we are looking at each other asking "What were we thinking?!" Told ya' these were coming. |
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| Travis & Jamie framing in a dormer on the cabin. |
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| The cabin door that Travis hand built...this started out as a red oak log! See why I say he's cooler than the other side of the pillow? |
| And one more of the side of the cabin. |
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