nails

Martin has been on pulling up flooring from the barn. The person(s) who built it used  exceptionally long nails, which have rusted and become difficult to pull out.

These nails are similar in style to the nails used to fasten the shingles to the house, except they are a bit longer (and they aren't the longest nails used in the barn).

From what little research (see link below) that I have done, I am assuming that these are original nails used when the house and barn were built in the early 1920s.

history of nails

deer flies

deer fly

more deer fly information

Maine has several seasons. We have the standard summer, fall, winter, and spring, but along with these we add in mud (between winter and spring), black fly (Mother's Day to the Fourth of July), and deer fly season (early to mid summer).

It has been a hot deer fly season this year.  As usual, biting insects don't tend to bother Martin, but they zero in on me like I am the only living thing on the planet that they could possibly feed on. While I am an tigin mowing, digging out stumps, fetching tools for Martin, or just waiting for the next job I need to do, I am tormented by deer flies. They love to circle around my head just waiting until my hands are occupied before they land to take a chunk out of me. I don't know how they do it, but as soon as I pick up two handfuls of roots, the deer flies light and start feeding. Instinctively I swat at them with my hands full of sandy roots. By the end of the day, I am bitten, hot, sweaty, and covered with grime from having flung it on myself while trying to defend myself from the pests.

emptying the barn

Since we started renovating an tigin, we have used the barn as storage space. Now that we need to work on the barn, it needs to be emptied.

 We think that the original barn floor was simply built on a few boards that were laid directly onto the ground. The boards have been soaked in oil. We assume that it was done intentionally as a way to slow down the boards from rotting.

Once the original floor became rotten enough to need to be replaced, the owners simply built a new floor on the old floor.  This left the old floor in place.