The video records a hands‑on workday where a small farm crew rebuilds a pole barn damaged by Hurricane Helene. The team discusses and executes the concrete‑pouring plan for two barn columns, decides whether to form the column now or later, and builds temporary braces to support the structure. A hydraulic leak in a lifting device is identified, troubleshooted, and fixed. Concrete is mixed manually using creek water, gravel, and Portland cement, with the crew experimenting to achieve a suitable slump. Throughout the day, the group coordinates tasks, shares meals (chili, chocolate desserts), and reflects on the barn’s role as winter housing for pigs, cows, and sheep, emphasizing the deep‑bedding, soil‑fertility system. The narrative ends with a sense of pride in teamwork, the educational value for the younger participants, and the storm’s unexpected role in strengthening community bonds.
Chapters
What's the goal for today?
To have all the concrete poured. Everything?
For both of them? Yeah.
Okay, let's go.
He thinks it'd be better to pour it all at once. The column too.
We need to make an E-form. A couple of E-forms.
What was your thought behind not doing the column now?
Well, you can brace it off of the form that's there probably to keep her from expanding.
I mean, it's just a little box. Basically.
Yeah.
Did you want to form it up and build it separately? Because we can do that too. That'd be a little bit easier, but it's 2 days of work rather than 1.
Oh yeah, we need to do it with 1 day while we have Ben.
Now I'm gonna get this thing leveled up.
Now we got stakes in, and once it's level, then we can go from there. What makes you think this was an impossible build? Well, because I guess it could be from ignorance. But also, it seems like it's a lot to make two forms. Also pull all those rocks out from underneath that other one. Yeah, undo that support, redo that support. I mean, it took us just to do that support the other day with Ben. It took us 3 hours, didn't it? Maybe to speed some things up, we will build another brace, let them be working on this. We'll have another brace. It's going to take a minute for the concrete to cure too, to be able to move that. So yeah, we need to do this.
Go down there and do—
make that.
What?
Two side by side going that way, two going the other way.
What are y'all waiting on?
We have 7 of the 4-footers. They don't know what they're doing. Yeah, you're doing this. Yeah, it's not that easy. About right there.
This one was too long.
This one was way longer.
Longer than 6 feet?
We just put the center up there.
It's leaking hydraulic oil.
It's leaking hydraulic oil like crazy. It's leaking hydraulic oil like it's going out of style. Threads are broken or something.
It's right there.
It looks like it blew out. This thing eats like 80 gallons of hydraulic fuel. Don't tighten it a lot.
I know.
You can break the threads. It's just how it is. It's making bad noises and it's because there's a hydraulic leak. I'm gonna put some hydraulic fluid in it.
Screw it in. This Mini X is everything for that second pole. We can't lift it up, we can't get the rocks off, we can't build a form under there. So this is everything for the success of today.
Okay, now we got— we tightened up the nut and now we put some more hydraulic on it and it's fixed now.
Almost got the first one ready to go, then we just got to build another one.
Wow, 2-hour check-in. We've built a brace, we're supporting the barn. Big Daddy and Ben have, have built a form. They're building the other one, so I'm thinking Let's get that done by lunch, ready, and then after lunch concrete, and it just might be doable. Meanwhile, good looking. What you got cooking?
I made chili. Should I make rice? Why is this water not getting hot?
Yes. Okay, then we're all ready to eat. You guys think we got this after lunch? Oh, easy. It's easy. Yeah, absolutely. Is that easy?
It's the easiest part. The slowest part is going to be mixing.
Yeah.
So we're getting started with the concrete. Um, we are having to haul this all down by hand from a pallet. We're just mixing it down here with creek water. Um, we're adding some gravel and some Portland to it. I think we'll knock this out pretty quick. Because the opening on this thing is so small, we have found using this, you know, any other time it's easier to split the bag in half, tear it, and dump half at a time. We can mix two 80-pound bags in this, surprisingly, and it'll mix it just fine. But we are doing something different. We're adding, you know, rock and some Portland to this, so we're just gonna play around and figure out what kind of mix we like.
I just ate lunch.
Everybody Everybody's full, we're raring to go. They've got the concrete mixer going.
That's it.
So barring any crazy difficulties, I think we got this.
Oh, I think that's a good mix.
Rich. It's a perfect slump. Not too wet, not too dry.
He's gonna mix up one more bag.
We're gonna see where we're at.
Let's see where it is.
Huh?
Can't.
Why?
There's a slab, concrete slab.
You can move it.
It needs to go that way, and it's on an angle.
Oh, thank goodness it's the same as that one.
We're gonna have to lift up on this slab and go over the concrete. This concrete is laying— it's a huge piece. Hopefully we have enough leeway to actually lift it up a little bit.
We are going to have to move it a bunch, like 3 inches. I'm just going to notch the form rather than try to get this whole chunk of concrete that it's sitting on. We'll just notch the form and work around it. All of this is going to be filled up with dirt and rock later. We just need to get this post supported and that's the easiest, quickest thing. So I'm going to grab the chainsaw and I'm just going to notch the corner of this form so we can get it level. Otherwise I have to remake this entire stem that's coming up, uh, and I don't want to do that.
This pole barn is so much for our health journey because it's our total winter housing situation for the pigs in the summer and then the cows and the sheep in the winter, and that's our lamb, that's our beef, that's our dairy. Because we do deep bedding method, they're mixing their manure with those wood chips. It's our soil fertility program, so we capture all those nutrients in the winter when otherwise it'd be lost if they were out in the pasture.
It's going to be close as far as if we're going to have enough concrete. We've already used half our concrete.
4 less than an hour.
5 hours, you know, that's pretty good for all this work. We made it, we're done. Everything went off without a hitch. The first part took a lot more concrete than we thought, but that was fine. We had brought some extra concrete that we'd had left over, so we had enough concrete concrete.
Um, it went great.
Couldn't have done that without everybody pitching in. And the boys, I was just so proud of them. Couldn't think of a better education for them, learning how to build the foundations of the most important structures of our lives. Uh, proud of everybody. This one goes down as a really good memory. What a cool— what, what I mean, at least this storm has done is brought us together.
That's dark chocolate. This is milk chocolate. Oreo peanut butter cake.
Maybe we should get tape.
What inspired this, Rebecca?
I saw an Instagram post on someone eating a DQ, and I was like, oh, I kind of want to eat one, but I don't want to eat gelato.
