Back to the slate roof tomorrow. Barns today.

I was at work ninety minutes or less this morning, and shooed off the upper lot, where shingles would be falling, so I made a couple of pictures and left. On the way back from taking Emily to work tomorrow there should be lovely pictures of what happened today.

Linda and I went to lunch today. For one reason and another we haven't caught up with each other since August. First we went to the woods so my phone could ring her phone, lost somewhere among the leaves yesterday, as she looked for winter berries.  I didn't ask.

That accomplished, as we drove back to the road I admired the large barn and the cows across the road. Linda grew up on a dairy farm in upstate New York. She told me to pull off the road so she could show me the cow with the bell.

A bell on a cow is no longer usual, but this is a Mennonite farm, and she assumed the bell hearkened back to more rural times. "Look for the cow with the leather collar." Whoops. Three cows with leather collars and bells. Until I edited these photos, I did not see the Malamute keeping an eye on me looking for cows with collars! 

Another cow with a leather collar and a bell. "Perhaps it's tryout week for lead cow!" Linda spotted the bull. "His nose is right up her butt!" I spotted him! It was a lovely blue sky kind of day. We headed off for lunch. 

The lunch crowd came, the lunch crowd left, and eventually so did we. Four months is some serious catching up, though, and we were wondering where we could go next. Show me more barns, I suggested, and we spent another couple of hours pursuing barns in Columbiana County, Ohio, USA.

We saw more than a few, but often I could not find a good place to pull off the road. Columbiana is rural, but less so year by year. A lot of truck traffic. Semi's on county roads. They aren't pleased to be stuck behind a couple of rubber necking old ladies, looking for a way to stop for a picture of a barn.

Although there is a hill behind, this is not a bank barn. The current fencing and the green of the enclosure indicates horses; the barn overhang suggests it formerly was a cow barn. The overhangs are common on eastern and mid-Atlantic 19th century barns; they offered shelter to cows in wet and rainy weather.

The farmer's daughter commented on the good condition of the barn. "All the windows are intact. The paint is recent." Not particularly noticeable in either photo, there are three Dutch doors under the overhang, another indication of a horse barn.

 A fairly small bank barn on a seemingly abandoned property. Bank barns are so convenient to storing bedding and feed above the animals in the lower level. The integrity of the foundation is the key to the life of the barn. This foundation may need stabilizing.

The barn's shingles indicate it was built in 1878. Farm dogs do know their job. Another vigilant sentinel watched until we left. This bank barn's original stone foundation can be seen on the right. On the left the foundation is firmed up by concrete blocks.

We stopped for a picture of the Black Angus at the feeder. Back on the road I asked the farmer's daughter what crop was still in the field. Linda hung out the window, peering. Finally she said the leaves looked like they had a bit of a tang. I stopped, she jumped the ditch, snapped a leaf and began chewing.

Then she pulled aside leaves until she found the fruit. Not squash. Very large and heavy. She couldn't get a good grip to lift it a little. She stood by the side of the road, chewing her leaf, waving another over her head at the farm house. "Yoo, hoo. Look over here. Come out and ask me what I'm doing so I can ask you what you're growing."

Several fruitless minutes and she was running out of leaf to wave. "Pull those leaves aside; I'll take a picture. America will know." And I did. Can anyone tell us what this might be?

Slate roof day four

When I put in my usual nine fifteenish appearance this morning,

the crew was working on the south side of the building.

The man in the plaid jacket was back;

The two young men on the scaffolding were calling down to a third fellow,

'I need the level. I need ten penny nails.'

The man in the plaid shirt said hello to me, and I decided it was OK to say hello to him.

The third man handed off items to one of the two young guys, 

and said this was young man's work.

This was the last time I looked up.

I asked the fellow in the plaid shirt how the bundles of shingles would go up?

'Elevator?' I hopefully inquired.

'Some outfits have those, we don't.'

Oh, wait. this is the last time I looked up.

Vertigo.

And I wasn't even up there.

This has to have been the last time.

A crane comes in next. The old shingles will come down.

The crane will lift up the loads of shingles.

Here's a good photo of the stabilizing guy wire system.

The wire is around a scaffolding upright, through the eye bolt and back around another upright.

Pretty neat, the reflected flags

Snapping in the wind.

 I left at three.

Looks ready for business tomorrow.

Looking up with no men up there 

didn't affect me.

It may be easier to look up tomorrow, with those railings up.

I'll be back on the job myself.

  

Slate roof day three

I had a ten a.m. dental appointment, and didn't get to work until close to noon. I intimated I had places to go, but the dentist didn't hurry.

Still on the east side, the balance of the scaffolding is up.

Only the two young men at work this morning, at least when I got there.

The older fellow in the plaid jacket was not in sight.

It is warmer today, but not much. These guys clapped their hands a lot yesterday and we heard those pipes clang and drop frequently.

If you wonder how this affair works, as, of course I do, this is the best shot I could get of the rigging.

That pipe from the scaffolding to the building is part of the tensioning system that makes the contraption sturdy. Well, if you're a young man.

There is an eye bolt screwed into the wood above the pipe, and a guy wire goes around the pipe and is pulled snug, stabilizing the platform. Well, if your'e a daring young man. 

Snow on the deck I stood on for the pictures, but the sun is warm if you're working hard, And a young man.

One young man on the top course.

Yes, those are ice cycles from the roof.

Brrrrr....

Tomorrow will be close to fifty and more sunshine. I expect the prep work is done and the action starts then.

We (the spectators) wonder how the shingles go up. One person familiar with construction and who explained the guy wires to me is hoping there will be an elevator at the end to take up the loads of shingles.

We'll see. 

How do you put a slate roof on an old schoolhouse?

One step at a time

The slate was delivered and staged in the yard last August. A slate roof for the old girl.

Green trees and everything. 

Vermont black.

Monday morning. Yesterday.

No green trees.

The white truck has the yellow uprights.

The green truck bed is full to the top with parts to hold them together.

I said hello, but didn't intrude on their space.

They carried on like men with a job to do.

Progress when I left around noon, Monday.

The view down my ravine, leaving for work this morning.

Up to three inches, where squalls set up and persist. (Weather speak for "You may get a lot of this stuff." We're up to three inches now, at one in the afternoon.)

Tuesday morning.

Laying boards on the scaffold levels. That's the end of my expertise.

This is the west side of the building.

Staging scaffolding to the east side of the building.

The slate now.

The snow the men are working in.

Also the view out my office window.

Not bad. Lovely on a summer day.

Fried eggs

I've mentioned on more than one occasion my mother was not a good cook, except pot roast on Sunday. 

I've spent most of my adult life avoiding cooking, too, but there was a ten year stretch when I did cook.

I was married, and my husband expected three meals a day. Yes, he came home for lunch. There were kids to feed, too.

My mother-in-law was an exquisite cook. Standing roast beef on Christmas Eve. You should have been there. I learned more about cooking from her than I learned in the kitchen of my childhood.

My memory of eggs at home is scrambled eggs, served for dinner, with spinach. (Mine went under the table.) 

I recall fried eggs as an outdoor camping dish, my brothers frying a lot of bacon and throwing in eggs at the end, while I toasted bread in a toaster that fit over another burner. It was a three ring Coleman, and I know a pot of coffee was on the third ring.

Fried eggs as an indoor breakfast dish did not cross my mind until my husband requested them. He watched from the dining card table in our miniscule apartment kitchen, and I do recall the instant I had the eggs nicely in the skillet he was at my shoulder, adding a tablespoon of water and clapping a lid on. OK, that’s how you fry eggs indoors.

My grandmother also was an excellent cook, and gave me some cookbooks. They were old, from the beginning of her marriage, now a hundred years ago. These actually were “housekeeping” books, and I could read about running a vacuum cleaner and dusting, where my skills were adequate.

The directions for frying eggs were so ludicrous I shared them with some other young wives at work, in the break room. Can you believe, you crack the egg into hot bacon grease, and then you can spoon the hot grease over the egg to hasten the cooking.

Silence. “Well, that’s what I do. How do you fry an egg?” from a person l admired.  I was so tongue tied by the realization that exploded in my mind I could not speak. First, my fried eggs actually were “fried” in water. Second, do not denigrate anything I did not understand well enough to have an opinion.

I never answered Meg’s question and the topic turned, of course. At my first opportunity I asked my mother-in-law, what’s that called, how you make eggs. “Oh, they’re steamed, my dear.”

I still have fried egg moments.