In July of 2011, Terri’s barn was completed. Watching it being built was a true education in culture and the American work ethic.
Terri had contracted with an Amish builder named Andy Byler who built the barn from start to finish in eleven days.
The crew of builders numbered anywhere from two to six although for much of the time Andy worked alone.
The Amish culture frowns on much of modern technology including motor vehicles. That meant that Andy would pay someone to drive him and his employees from their community in Madison County to our home.
After the project got underway, Andy, his wife Paulie and their infant lived with another couple in an Airstream on our property while they built the barn.
The hammering started at sun-up and ended at sun-down. I had never seen anyone work harder.
While they were forbidden to use electric tools, they cut their lumber with gas-powered chain saws.
Instead of using nail guns, they made do with hammers and they were so expert in their craft that there was almost never a wasted or bent nail.
As the job unfolded Terri and I learned a lot about their world.
We learned that although formal education stopped during teen years, Andy and his crew were some of the brightest and most inquisitive kids I ever got to know.
I refer to them as “kids” because they were in their early twenties and younger than both Kate and Meghan.
Andy could lay out a job with the eye and skills of a trained architect. He could estimate and acquire materials as well as any project manager and, if what we planned didn’t seem right, he could redesign it on the fly.
We also learned that once schooling ended, these young Amish kids were allowed a year to live outside their communities in which they could experience the modern conveniences and freedoms from restrictions before deciding whether they wanted to return and remain part of their Amish communities.
This explained Andy’s encyclopedic knowledge of country music and country and western radio stations which I found on the truck radio while transporting them back to Madison County at the end of some of the work days.
Bruce Springsteen’s music wasn’t lost on them either.
One day I came home early and encountered Andy and his friend and fellow crew member, Owen, waiting for a delivery and reading the morning paper which we still have delivered.
There was a story in the paper about one of my defendants cursing at me during a court proceeding and whom I’d held in contempt.
Andy asked me, “Did that fellow really say those words to you in court ?” “Yes, he did.” I replied. There was a moment of silence and then Owen said in astonishment, “Holy cats!”
I told Owen that if the guy had said that, instead of swearing at me, he wouldn’t be in jail.
One of the features that would be integral to the barn was water.
We were fortunate that our friend and next door neighbor, Kevin Carter, is a superb excavator.
Terri hired him to dig and install the water line running from the house to the barn and he dug a trench that ran well below the frost line.
We learned how accomplished Kevin was, when we had an unusually frigid winter and water lines in many of the other barns on the road froze, requiring the barn owners to hand carry buckets of water from their homes to the barns for their animals several times a day until the spring thaw.
Once the barn was done, it was time for the mules to come home.
Franklin came home first.
Nancy Cerio brought him home in a trailer and we walked him into the barn and put him in a stall that had access to the pasture.
I was about to get my first demonstration of exactly how herd bound mules are.
Franklin walked out into the pasture faced east and began to bray loudly.
He clearly didn’t like being separated from all the horses that he had spent the past several month with.
I was astounded to see that in facing east, he knew exactly in which direction his herd was.
He continued to bray loudly and my neighbor, Kevin Carter, asked me, “He isn’t going to do that all night is he ?”
“No, of course not” I told him although I had no idea whether he was or not.
The braying continued over the next couple of hours but the breaks between the brays became longer until he stopped altogether.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I got all of us a beer and we toasted to silence.
Tulip came home next and Franklin was delighted to have a pasture mate especially one who was female.
Mules are sterile but no one has told them.
Donovan remained at Nancy’s for several more weeks gaining weight while I continued to work with him.
I learned the hard way that you should always give an equine a wide berth when walking them. I was walking Donovan from the pasture to the barn and he stepped on my foot.
It didn’t help that it was about half an hour before the start of golf league and I was wearing soft golf shoes.
Once he got his fifteen hundred pound hoof of my foot, I managed to limp to the car and limp through a round of golf.
Since my golf game is so bad normally, the guys in league thought I was making the limp up as an excuse.
The next day I went out and bought a pair of steel toed boots which I wore whenever I was around the mules in the future.
A couple of weeks later Donovan came home and the menagerie was partially complete.
More to come next week.