A Barn Raising

In the 1800's there was an event called a 'barn raising' in which members of the rural community would come together to help a farmer build a barn.  It is still done today in some Amish and Mennonite communities.  As the picture below shows, it was an event with great fanfare.  There was even a band at this barn raising!  As evidenced by the folks balancing on the rafters, this was well before OSHA regulations, Worker's Comp claims, and personal injury lawyers.  If ol' Jedediah fell off the barn, I assume the band would strike up a funeral dirge and then they'd bury him out back.

Image Credit

We had a 'barn-raising' last weekend at our house, but there was not much fanfare and there was definitely no band.  It was only Russ and me working on it and we didn't get a new barn.  We merely raised our existing one.  Technically, we raised our hen house.  The hen house sits on skids made of 4x6 beams that are directly on the ground.  Since it gets quite muddy in the corral, I began to worry about the skids beginning to rot and thus compromise the structural integrity of the hen house. Something had to be done!  This house wasn't built on the rock.

Sitting in the mud

I had this on my to-do list for quite some time and thought about how I might complete this task.  The hen house is well-built and heavy.  This project would require engineering skills akin to those employed in building the Egyptian Pyramids.  Not really.  In the end I used a Harbor Freight 3 ton low profile floor jack.  We dug holes beneath each corner of the hen house and inserted the jack, and lifted one corner and inserted a brick to hold it up.  We repeated on the other 3 corners.  We didn't want to lift the hen house too much at once and damage the structure, so we did it gradually.  We shoveled some dirt in each of the four corner holes, inserted the jack and lifted again.  This time we inserted a cinder block under each corner.  This got the skids out of the mud.

A Barn Raising

We then used our very rudimentary brick-laying skills to seal up the entire area underneath the 4x6 skids.  This will keep possums and other critters from getting in.  Some were a little loose, but after a rain or two, the heavy hen house will settle a bit and tighten things down.  Hopefully this "barn raising' will lengthen the life of the hen house.