Here is a nicer photo of the pasture from “up top”; if you view this full size, you can see the new line of fencing here, and some of the beautiful colors coming out on the nursery trees. Now, if only there wasn’t a shipping container out there in the middle of the field…. We’re hoping this will resolved sooner or later.
The rest of the old homestead barn fell down a few months ago, sadly. I have a copy of the building records- the original owner spent $587.67 on the barn and concrete silo, combined, in July, 1902! It was about 8500 square feet, made of fir logged off this site and a cedar shingle roof.
But, unfortunately, it looks like nobody ever re-roofed it, there is still a single layer of old-style, large shingles on it. And, it was lacking in structural supports in the lateral direction. So, there was just no saving it, at this point.
It’s amazing that it lasted as long as it did. Here is a photo of the cleanup effort currently, we have maybe 1/3 of the timbers cleaned up, and maybe 3/4 of the roof taken care of. We are saving any good wood we find, and there is quite a lot, but also much more is not salvageable– either rotted, or too damaged by some kind 
of wood boring beetle.
We have been enjoying much of the wood for evening campfires, but have also had some small fires going during the day to help get rid of some of the wood (well, that is, only 3’x3′ campfires, cooking or religious fires are legal, so of course, we’ve never exceeded that! 😉 ). There are lots of bathtubs in (well, under, now) the barn that were used for feed and water troughs. So, Kirk is using a couple for shingle burning pits. In the end, they’ll go to the recycle center, but are getting one last use now.