Our first year's accomplishments on restoring the farm

'Chainsaw Mike' with the first of many brushpiles to come.

My husband and I purchased the 6.5 acres of pasture and farm buildings Thanksgiving week 2011 and have made some noticeable progress during the first year which the photos below show:

Lisa rolling aluminum paint--messy stuff!




Hog barn with new roof tin on South side as of January 2012.




Hog barn with repaired roof and siding on North side; all painted with aluminum paint in February 2012.



Freshly painted 1000 gallon propane tank as of April 2012.



Well House with freshly painted door and trim as of April 2012.



Maggie, the farm dog, 'helping us' work on barn.
 

 

New soffits on south side of house as of June 2012

Farm house has steel siding that was installed during remodel in 1975. Since it is almost 40 years old, the siding needs a paint job. We are planning for that to be our major project for 2013.




New aluminum facia wrap and vinyl soffits in progress on west end of house.

New soffits and facia trim; window trim clad in aluminum for low maintenance.

Aerial photos through the years

A common thing you see in the country is aerial photos of farms.  Various companies will hire photographers to fly over and take photos of farms then send their salespeople out to sell the photos to the farmers.  Here are some photos of our farm taken through the years:

1956 aerial photo taken from the southwest.  You can see the large West barn (that burned in 1966). This photo was before the long finishing hogbarn (where the weaned piglets are finished to market weight) was built on the south side of the silo in 1966 and before the farrowing shed (where sows give birth to their litters of piglets and are kept unil weaned) was built onto the east end of the East barn.

1976 aerial photo taken from the west.  This was shortly after the house was remodeled into a gambrel-style (right side of photo).  The finishing hogbarn is visible south of the red tile silo.  A Morton building hay shed had been built on the old foundation of the West barn.  In the forefront is part of  'the 20' acres which we also owned at that time.

August 2012 aerial photo  taken from the south.  All the pastures and fields look very brown since this was taken during the 2012 severe drought and the corn had already been harvested.  You can see the shiny roofs on the outbuildings that had just been replaced or repainted in 2012.  The east barn is also gone since we had it torn down in the Spring of 2012.  The house is barely visible through the trees.