The Burial
In the previous “Dixie Barn” post we mentioned that the barn was likely constructed over several years due to various clues with one clue being the three different foundations. Well after looking into the stability of these foundation and the damage incurred from the tree roots that had grown up under it we decided that parts of it just had to go. But what does one do with a decent amount of large concrete blocks that really can serve no further structure or design purpose in the reconstruction? Well you burry it of course.
Jaken called around and ended up finding a concrete saw and a mini excavator to rent for the weekend. We left before even the crack of dawn on Friday morning to get to Home Depot right when it opened so that we could get the concrete saw. When Jaken returned to the truck with saw in hand he had a pretty irritated look on his face and was shaking his head. “What a bunch of crooks. I got to the checkout and first they didn’t even have the saw I reserved in the first place, no sure what reserved means to them…and then the guy at the check out says ‘Oh are you going to need to rent a blade too or do you have your own?’ DO I NEED TO RENT A BLADE?! WHAT?! An additional $55 on top of the initial price and a ‘required protection fee’. A load of crooks”. Needless to say his irritation was justified. We continued on our journey to the property to meet up with Jaken’s dad and grandpa. We unloaded the tractor and four-wheeler and Jeremy left to go pick up with mini excavator with the trailer.
Jaken and his grandpa got started on working with Jaken making cuts into the concrete walls on the perimeter of the barn. They way it was built was a flat concrete floor with a center strip taller than the sides and on the edges they rose to about a foot tall for the walls to sit on. These mini walls were badly deteriorated and cracking so removing them is the best route to take while protecting the existing floor foundation. Jaken used the saw to cut around the edges of these so that grandpa could take the tractor and pull them away from the rest of the structure.
When Jeremy returned Jaken unloaded the mini-ex and started driving it into the barn area. It was quite slow moving but pretty fun to watch him drive. They then got started digging some pretty big holes for all the concrete to go into. Jeremy seemed to be having a blast and after he got all the concrete in the hole he decided he would go ahead and start working on the old fence and just pull that in the hole and then onto several small intrusive trees and bushes and by the time he was done we had a whole opened up back yard to explore. He managed to save all the large trees and just take out the smaller ones and their stumps, tons of the majorly invasive grapevines, and all of the fence. Steven had been able to come over with his new tractor which has a cool claw attachment that just picks up whole piles of trees and carried them over to the burn piles. That tool really helped expedite the clean up process tenfold. The whole area looked transformed and that’s saying something considering they had already done a decent amount of clearing prior to this weekend.
While Jeremy, Steven, and Grandpa were working on the land we started working on cleaning out one of the rooms. We got the small trailer pulled up close and our gloves on and just started piling things out of the room and onto the trailer. I was hoping there were lots of things to save but the bugs and critters had really done a number on most everything so very litter could be saved unfortunately. We did find a cute tiny glass baby bottle, Brooklyn’s old wooden blocks to bring home to Hope, and of course the never ending glass jars. There were also some documents from when Brooklyn’s parents moved in that outlined where various utilities were installed so that was helpful to keep for the future house build.
We all got burned out a little before sundown so we packed up and prepped for the next day. Brooklyn and Hope were headed to Louisiana to visit her grandfather who lives there and her mother while Jaken would be back out to work.