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Mountain Man Mondays; Back to the Barn

I had lots of questions about our return trip to the Ozarks which I wanted to answer.

Our farm in the Ozarks is about a 30 hour drive from Vermont. At the moment, we are planning to leave in October and return in April. We will have satellite internet service. Last time we were in the Ozarks, there were no installers and the satellite companies wouldn’t let us install it ourselves. Now, there is one installer and I’m on the waiting list! I hope I’ll have even more to share as we begin our adventures in a new place. Red Pine Mountain will be left alone for the winter unless someone would like to volunteer to be it’s caretaker.

Here’s a picture of all the lumber Mountain Man has processed for our Ozark’s timber framed cabin.
Mountain Man hasn’t worked on our new barn recently. He did put in some windows and then he built the bars for the stall windows.
But the big decision has been the barn flooring. Mountain Man couldn’t decide what would be best. Concrete and mats? Possibly. Dirt? Unlikely. Hardwood? Now you’re talking Mountain Man’s language. So we decided to go with hardwood floors to replicate the barns of Vermont’s past. And, of course, we are using our own red pine.

Here’s our new hardwood flooring. Mountain Man is stacking it to put it on sticks to dry.
But before he can actually put down the flooring, he has a lot of prep work. First, he has to put stone down all along the center aisle of the barn and then level it.

“Am I really up to this?”
“Better get going. This stone won’t move itself.”
“Don’t want to knock out that wall or I’ll have even more work.”
The first of many loads of stone.
Before the stone.
Shoveling away and then raking it to smooth it out.
“Why did you want those hay burners?”
When he’s done shoveling and smoothing the stone with a rake, it looks like this:
But there’s still lots more to be done. And that’s just one of several steps before the actual hardwood flooring can be installed.
And what am I doing while Mountain Man is laboring away? Why admiring the beauty of a Vermont summer day.

Wild flowers in the meadows.
Beautiful vistas.

But not buried up to my waist shoveling stone. I did ask to help, honest I did but Mountain Man said “no, I might hurt myself.”
And that’s my Marvelous Mountain Man for you.

ADDENDUM: I didn’t expect Mountain Man to finish this project today. He told me he wouldn’t but right after I posted this entry, he came in and said,

“Honey, I’m finished.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Yup, got it all done.”

Really, I should have known. Anyway, here’s the photos. And, now he’s off to cook dinner for us; fresh asparagus from our garden, couscous, barbecued chicken with his own special homemade barbecue sauce and apple pie (homemade of course). How lucky can a girl get?