The downpour....inside the barn

Photos:  Old photos of the barn, looking overgrown.  Notice the roof.....  And the photo of the first floor before the chickens moved in.  It actually looked clean. I was out in the barn yesterday, after running full-speed through a driving thunderstorm to get there, and had to stop and wonder why the noise of rain was louder inside the hay loft than it was outside the barn itself.  Could it possibly have started raining harder than it already was?  Was it hail, slamming into the roof? There was a steady downpour of leaks from the roof, not just one place, but many....INSIDE the barn.  Only once before have I seen the roof leak that badly.   Hay was getting wet (feed it to the cows before it starts molding!), the floor was getting soaked (watch where you step, because some spots of the floor might buckle under your footstep when weaker than normal), and there was no way to stop it, catch it, or contain it. Downstairs, under the area where I've already torn down moldy, soggy drywall and wet, mouse-tunneled insulation (the ceiling), brown drips of rain water were soaking the chicken bedding.  The rain could make its way directly down the supporting beams and into the first floor.  Good thing?  Without the ceiling in place, the barn beams will dry more quickly and not rot.  Bad news?  They will get wet every time we get this type of rainstorm.  Again and again. Under the other spots where drywall and insulation are still intact, moisture was beading up on the ceiling, and the drywall was starting to sag.   That was yesterday. Just now, I was closing in the animals for the night, and checked on the hay loft situation.  Wet hay means moldy hay, which means heat is being produced, which CAN mean spontaneous combustion.....  In the paraphrased words of a Greenwood-area historian, barns in the style of ours tended to "quite often" go up in "spectacular" display when hay stored inside a barn caught fire.  It could be dry hay which was lit by a fire-source, or....it could be wet hay that generated heat. I don't want our barn to be a spectacular display.  I want it to house our animals for years to come. Sure enough, more wet hay, so the cows got more than they should have had (waste).  More soaked flooring.  Still dripping from the ceiling beams, even though the rain had let up.   Back down on the first floor, there was one full section of drywall/ceiling that was ready to collapse onto chickens who were trying to settle in for the night. So, throwing all caution to the wind, I started ripping it out.  Chickens squawked and scattered.  Ceiling pieces started raining down (pun intended). The ceiling literally fell apart, splotchy black on the inside, soggy through the entire plaster sheet.  The insulation flopped down once the drywall was gone, hanging from the ceiling and dripping dirty water all over (in some cases, deluging!).  Drywall, insulation, flakes of white barn paint (probably liming from old-time dairy days), mouse poop, and years' worth of dust came cascading down.  I should have been dressed for disaster-remediation.  I should have been wearing a mask to keep from breathing in all the gunk. The barn will continue to leak if we don't do something.  The mold will continue to grow.  More drywall and insulation will need to be ripped out, whether or not it gets wet.  When the rain comes down at the right angle, or the wind blows hard enough, or the snow freezes under the shingles, there will be leaking inside the barn.  It's not a healthy situation, and would ultimately spell out the end to our beautiful, historic dairy barn. You've seen the old barns that simply collapse in the middle---like they've imploded.  The support beams rot through and finally give way.  Or one end starts to crumble away, and one day the whole building is in ruins. Unless..... There's good news.  We've hired a roofing contractor.  It will cost a lot of money, but we expected the estimate to be a lot higher.  He is coming in June (after our family reunion!) to install metal sheeting on top of the existing roof.  He will set it up so that air can flow up and out of the barn and under the new roofing, for better air movement inside the barn itself.  The vent at the top of the barn will be "shored up", so that the rodent or raccoon hole chewed into it is no longer a problem. There will still be windows to replace, siding to repair, painting to be done.....  I'll still send Jeremy out with hammer, nails, and tin can lids to cover any rat or mouse holes in the wood flooring or siding.  We'll have plenty of work left to do, both to the barn and in the rest of the property.  But what a relief and a blessing to know that the roof will not be a problem anymore!  June can't come soon enough! Laura http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/