You probably caught it the last few years, that I get into a mad panic mode of “get stuff done before winter” This year was no different. What took most of the time was getting a new roof on the shed. Last year I used old shingles to patch holes. Come spring the patches were there, but twice as many new holes had opened up. And I was out of spare shingles. To keep our possessions dry, and the shed from rotting, it was time to fix the roof. This involved stripping 756 sq feet of cedar shakes off the rook, hammering in the little nails, adding new plywood decking, then finally shingling.
I didn’t get it all done at once. In fact I had it 2/3rds stripped when some fall rains started the week before vacation. I quickly got a layer of tar paper up just to keep it a bit dry while we were gone. There were a few rips, but nothing too drastic. Thinking ahead, I had laid a bunch of spare 2×6′s out on top of it. After vacation, I found that the tar paper would rip if you tried to traverse it. So, it was time to shingle what was completed, then finish prepping off the remaining 1/3 at the top. I might have looked odd, but it was far safer and allowed me to work in blocks.
Rick was back on the scene after being laid up most of the summer. He helped clean things up and started opening up the remaining bin walls. It was really starting to look cool. Luckily, the grass stopped growing and I got a John Deere 318 to replace the 300 I have been using.
Yes, the new tractor is 20 years old. However, it is still 15 years newer then previous one. It is in very nice shape, runs strong and can use all the previous implements except the rear tiller. I might sell the old one, as I don’t know if I really need a spare. In fact, I just bolted on a 3 point hitch to the 318 tonight.
The second panic this fall. Well, I should say that I have always heard a squeak in high winds at the farm. Never found it, and I spent a good deal of time staring at the inside of roofs, and at the metal roofing and trim of the crib. I figured it was a loose nail on the metal roofing someplace up high. Just before vacation we were in the crib and it was really blowing and we were amazed how solid the place felt.
Until two weeks ago….
Reagan and I stopped by to pick up something and kinda waste time down there. As soon as we walked up the stairs, there was big squeaking and a worse noise. As we looked up, the entire couple was rocking from side to side, almost 2″ I bet. This was new.
In a panic, we got to work. I’ll explain that the couple is a 6′ by 8′ box that sits above the roof line. The corner supports are 2×6′s that do run down to the top of the bin walls. That’s it, and those were toe-nailed in to the top of another board. Well, sometime in the past 80 years, the middle of the crib settled about 3/4 of a inch from the weight of the full bins of corn. The outside walls did not. The roof never moved, but the floor did. The nails that held these supports were barely touching anymore. I have added a few nailer blocks and toe-nailed a few extra screws into these supports, but never really reinforced them, as that was an area we would be working on later, and that we hadn’t sen any movement there before. Opps.
The first act was to grab any scrap plywood we could find, and nail in large gussets to reconnect and stabilize these 4 supports. Right away, that seemed to make a difference. The north and south copula walls have the corner 2×6′s then just a pair of 2×4 studs in the middle. Both of the 2×4′s were cracked across the entire nail area that held then down. The 2nd phase was to fill the stud bays with blocks running both ways to reinforce this area on both walls. Then connect all 4 studs with a new 2×6. The north side was ok, but only had 1 original nail each. That would lead to flexing too! Now that there was a secure frame around the copula, and a lot more nails, we were feeling ok. I quickly added some scraps to tie the East and West walls down to the joists and one last piece of plywood up on the North wall.
Fast forward a week after a good storm.
Everything was OK! I got some XPS foam insulation and started filling all the stud bays of the copula. From there, both the North and South sides (the axis the flex was on) got sealed in solid plywood. No chance of flex now. We only got 1/3 of the east wall sealed, so I’d like to get a bit more done before Winter really hits. Might as well finish this.

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