A new year… and a new barn !! Wow are we moving right along. Our Amish friend Daniel is so dedicated and honest. He was supposed to come over on 12/30 to help with the barn. He called in the morning to advise us that a friend of his had lost his workshop overnight to a fire and he wanted to go and help him out… so we said GO.. our roof can wait. We took the day off from barn building as well and went for a trip to Lexington where we got some new tires for the truck and Paul exchanged a tool at Sears. ( Silly me I bought him something he already had !! ) Anyway on 12/31 it was so cold and rained all day. Daniel showed up that afternoon telling us he could work if we wanted him to. We sent him home !!!

New Years Day brought with it some mighty cold temperatures, it didn’t get above 21 all day. But as long as there was nothing falling from the sky, we were determined to do some work. Daniel showed up around 9 AM and went onto the roof, which was a bit slippery. After he put up 3 sheets of metal he and Paul decided it was best to just wait until the sun came over the ridge and perhaps it would be better. So Daniel went to cut up some firewood from the trees that fell during the Tornado in October and we went inside. Around 1 PM Daniel showed up again and immediately went to work on the roof. With Paul passing the sheets of metal up to him, he began screwing them down. As each piece went up the ice began falling off and water dripped. Within an hour there were icicles hanging from the edge of the barn… or maybe it was sooner than that.

Paul kept passing the panels up and Daniel kept screwing them down. Around 3 PM Paul put two panels out on the lawn in the sun and I chipped off the ice and dried them off with towels. These were to be the final two pieces that Daniel would have to walk on.
The last two sheets went up on the roof around 3:45 and Daniel had them all screwed down by 4PM …. just in time to go home and do the milking on his own farm.

On 1/3 Paul worked all day outside to remove the temporary platforms he had put up for working on the roof. He stacked and stored all the wood in the barn too. It was very cold and it was snowing on and off all day long, with no accumulation on the ground.
In the afternoon he put on the wood 2×4s that we would use to attach the siding.

On 1/4 we attached the siding on that side of the barn and Paul framed in the doorway.