I typically take the week after thanksgiving off and dad and I trap together. This year I rented an excavator with plans of working with it the beginning of the week and trying to do some trapping the end of the week. Saturday a friend of mine delivered the hoe. I got some (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) elms and a maple removed from along my driveway, and then I moved on to clearing willow trees from around my big pond. Sunday we had church and Sunday dinner so I only managed to put a couple hours in the machine in the afternoon, I spent that clearing some trees on the backside of the pond dam. On Monday had to weld up the grapple on the tractor and then went to clearing trees on another one of my ponds. Dad would move and pile the brush with the tractor and grapple while I pulled trees. On Tuesday my daughter was sick so I was in charge of looking in on her while my wife and son were at preschool, so dad and I knocked down an old farrowing house in the back yard where I could keep an eye on her. Wife took her to the doctor when she got home from preschool, turns out she had the flu. The next day my wife son and I started feeling the symptoms. I still spent the day in the hoe and cleared the rest of the trees off my pond dam and worked on smoothing it out so I can keep it mowed, and also cut the dam on a third pond. Thursday wife was really sick so I was in the house taking care of her and the kids most of the day. Did manage to get a hole dug that afternoon to bury old concrete in. Friday I crawled farther out into the pond to get more of it to drain, and I moved concrete to the hole. Saturday morning my buddy picked the hoe up to return it. I pulled my ram from the ewes that evening and then today we had church and Sunday dinner. After that wired up a light in my dads lambing shed for him. All in all it was a productive week especially for spending couple days running a fever and feeling like crap!

What's the story behind picture number seven? I hope you don't spend much time under that roof.looks like it's suspended by a sky hook.

Waggler that’s the old farrowing house we tore down, I’ve got a video of dad pushing it over after that pic was taken. We’ve never seen anything built quite like that one. Once the siding boards were off you realize the only support holding up the building is about 4 2x4’s per side and 2 post in the middle of the building. No idea how they put this building up, there wasn’t really any structural skeleton, the rafters were put on after the siding based on the way the rafter boards were knotchwd over the siding boards. My uncle said when my gpa bought this farm that building was used as a chicken house, gpa ended up farrowing pigs in it instead.

looks like a great week getting stuff done

Yes but it stood strong for a lot of years. I would imagine that real wood vertical plank siding nailed top, bottom, and to those horizontal backers was rigid enough to carry the roof. That explains why the rafters were notched as such, walls totally built first.
Ahh they don’t build em like they used to.

Osky

Sort of like what we called here "Balloon construction". Planks to the roof were the main support and everything was nailed to them.......jk

Trapper D you bet, was a lot of things that got done that had been needing done for years

Osky your right, it was solid and nails must have been cheap back then because there was a plenty in it!

JK never heard that expression before

Way to power through
Good Job

Thanks 330