Category: The Barn

I Love my Husband Because . . .

On By JesseIn I Love my Husband Because . . ., Life, Mac n' Cheese Manor, The Barn1 Comment

this was the lower-level, back, right section of our barn two and a half months ago:

And this is that same section of our barn now:

That first set of pictures is not how the barn looked when we bought this place.  Back then it had a sloped cement floor, but Carl busted it all up with a jack hammer and piled it outside the barn so he could make the stalls big enough.  He has spent every spare moment since mid-September putting this together so my horses could safely ride out the harsh, New England winter.

Did Carl always dream of a farm life, you ask? . . . No.  Has Carl ever built anything bigger than a cabinet before? . . . No.  Did Carl always want to renovate a 1930’s dairy barn to safely and happily accommodate three horses? . . . shockingly . . . No.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s more than true love.  That is dedication, discipline, research, sleep deprivation, hours and hours of hard work in the freezing cold after already working a full day in the office . . . AND true love.

I’m a lucky girl and I know it.  : )

 

We Found it in the Barn: Coon Range

On By JesseIn Life, Mac n' Cheese Manor, The Barn2 Comments

Our first notable find in the barn was, without question, this old bottle of Kentucky bourbon.  It was sitting on a wooden work table just left of the front, sliding door.  We searched for information on Coon Range as well as the distillery, Taylor and Williams, but we could find very little beyond it’s inception in 1865 and that it was bought out in 1944.  I also looked for information on how to date whiskey bottles and  found a wealth of relatively inconclusive data.

This bottle does have a green tax strip, but most of the helpful info is worn off.  It also has the words “Federal Law Prohibits sale or reuse of this bottle” which apparently date the bottle to sometime between 1932 and 1964, so we don’t know exactly how long the whiskey has been there, but we know it’s been there awhile!  In talking to our neighbors (two of whom grew up in the home), their parents bought the house in the sixties and the whiskey was already in the barn then.  Their father, Gilbert, left it there undisturbed  and we’ve decided to do the same.  : )IMG_3921