photofarmer's photostream  

We've had very little snow, but the temperatures have been low enough to form some ice. I don't think they've been low enough, long enough to be safe, but I see a few tracks going out onto the ice

This is another piece of equipment found in the basement of the barn when we were cleaning it out. It's missing some parts.

Basically a leaky barrel was placed on the stand and filled with crushed apples. The jack (at the top of the post) is turned to press the juice out of the apples. The juice then runs out of the barrel onto the tray at the base of the post. The tray has a spout which is positioned over some sort of container to recieve the cider.

It's designed to be bolted to the floor so you can turn the jack. It would need some work before I would consider drinking any of the cider that came from it.

Since we were working under the barn we had to clean out the basement. The plow on the right above was upstairs and I knew it was there. The one on the left was buried in the basement and I found it just recently.

Both are broken and would take some repair to make them usable. Not that I'll be using them since they're designed to be drawn by a horse or ox. I only have tractors, and they don't lend themselves to this type of plow.

The plow on the right had handles when we first bought the farm, but they were broken and only attached by splinters, so they were removed to make room for other stuff. The one on the left has lost its drawbar (don't know what the proper name is).

The plows are slightly different, so I can't take them apart and assemble one complete plow. Although the broken materials are just wood and I have lots of it in the form of trees, I'm not about to spend the time fabricating a handle or drawbar, since I won't be using the plow. They're just for historical display at this point. And since they're in poor repair I thought it best to document them digitally.

When we bought the farm the barn had a hole in the roof. The hole had been there for a while and as a result the floor under the hole on the second floor had rotted out. We repaired the roof, but after a few years we found that the joists and floorboards on the first floor were also rotted. We just stayed away from that corner, but since we had to do some repairs to the other end of the barn we decided to repair the rotted beams.

The floor in this corner was full of junk, so we had to clean it out. We got a 15 yard dumpster for the plastic from the field and filled it about 1/3 with the plastic. We then cleaned out the basement of the barn and the debris in the corner and pulled out most of the rotted wood. That filled the rest of the dumpster. This is the hole that remained, before we started to replace things.