Before'n'Afters

We spent the weekend out on the farm. We raked and picked up baling twine and cut wires that were holding the old fence panels together, and we started to take down the half-built pole barn that was the chief (perhaps only) eyesore on the property. Here it is before, probably from too close, but you get the idea.

There are ancient, falling apart tarps. There's a pile of weeds. There's baling twine galore. So we started to take it down, a piece at a time. That was Saturday afternoon. Sunday, we got up, and John took his turn up the ladder with the cordless drill, while I started taking down the aluminum fence panels. Once he got the siding off of the north side of the structure, he notice that his ladder was swaying a little. Uh-oh. So he came down and looked at the pole, which looked a little bit, but not really, like this:

We had assumed (not unreasonably), that the concrete posts all went into the ground. And that the wood posts went all the way to the bottom of the concrete. Not so. The particular post that John was leaning his ladder on was being held up by the rest of the structure. The concrete had cracked away all around it to show that the post was sitting about 18 inches deep in the concrete, which was just sitting on the ground.

Oh dear. That meant it had to come down, now. Not later, not next week when the tree man comes, but now, before it fell into the neighbor's cow pen. So, we took a deep breath, and got our physics out. We took down 5 of the nine posts all by our lonesome, (I was like superwoman, pulling them down!) and then we got a little stuck, because the final four were attached at the top, and we weren't strong enough to just pull them all over at once, and also had nothing left to get all kinds of physics-y leverage around.

Our exceptionally nice and friendly neighbor, Dale, shouted at us to open the gate. 'I'm coming around!' he said. In he comes on his Kubota tractor, and pushes the rest of the thing right over. Now, it looks like this:

That's John, in his best conquering lumberjack pose, standing on the field of battle.

As an extra-special bonus, not only did we find out that our neighbor is one of the good guys (also one of 'The Club'---he'll have a beer with us...), but we uncovered this incredible view, which we will see everyday when we turn horses out, bring them in, ride in the arena, or even when we muck stalls. To think it was all covered up with shredded tarps, weathered wood and baling twine...