Progress at Cold Comfort - And it Feels GREAT!

For as long as Mark and I have owned this farm, we've had dreams and goals for Cold Comfort.  Just cleaning up the property was not good enough for us.  The house was first priority and we accomplished those goals last fall with getting windows repaired and sealed, trim painted, and patio created - making it our home. 

 The second priority was the barn. WELL, two days ago the new concrete floor was poured on the north side of the barn, the troughs were filled on the south side, and the pooper scooper wall (which was removed) was filled with stone and mortar.  The mason was so good that, when he finished, the patch was very hard to detect.

This is the finished floor.  It has a smooth but has a rougher finish than a garage floor so the animals with snowy, wet feet don't slip and fall. 

The next step is to get the water away from the edge of the foundation of the barn so the floor won't heave again next winter.  Mark has hired a excavator to come in and assist him to remove all the soil around the barn, lay plastic and insulation down, and then slope the soil away from the edges of the barn.  With the HUGE roof on the barn and the HUGE amount of snow we get yearly, the more water we take away from soaking beneath the barn, the better.

The final step will not take place until next summer - we want to see if the first two steps are successful and the floor doesn't heave over a UP winter. At that point, we'll do the final step of repeating all that we did inside on the lower barn to what we call the upper barn, which is about 1/3 the size of the lower barn.  That space will become two very important workshops - one for Mark and one for me.  These work spaces will become the farm hub spaces so we are not wasting so much of our time walking back and forth for tools and stuff that we need...it will be housed where we need it.

Mark deeply researched building heaving and we THINK all this will work but since we've not done this before, we need all your prayers that all Mark's hard work will be successful so we can move forward.  We've been told that if this works, the barn should last another 100 years or more.  I'll post photos as they excavate around the barn so you can watch it come together.

Wish us luck.