When I bought my farm back in 1984 I was a member of the UMWA working for Enoxy Coal Company driving a 120 ton rock truck hauling overburden on the midnight shift. I was bringing home a pretty good paycheck with a stellar benefit package. I had no debt other than my  mortgage and utilities.  I had  a good car and a good truck both paid off. I had big plans for all the things I was going to do with this place with all that $$$ I was making! Two weeks after I had surrendered all my savings for a down payment and my mortgage was approved Murphy stepped in, I was laid off<gulp>, kicked to the curb again! The farm came complete with lots of small sheds and buildings but nothing one could really call a barn. The old hay barn had a run in underneath that would do for my 2 horses but where to put my big sow and few brush goats was a problem.  

I did have a  old corn crib doing nothing, but it was in the wrong place. Since the corn crib was built on a big flat rock and wasn't actually attached to the ground I asked a neighbor with a tractor if it could be moved.  I sure wish I had pictures of that old corn crib being skidded down the driveway but I don't. After the crib was backed into place on one of the only two fairly flat pieces of ground here it wasn't hard to scavenge enough material out of the buildings( the old man who lived here NEVER threw anything away) to slap a little lean to on the side of the corn crib. Not pretty, but cozy enough for Rosie, her piglets and the goats. I traded an old shotgun I had for the moving of the crib, scavenged roofing nails from out of the old mans treasures so all I had in "my first barn" was the cost of a roll of roofing paper.
 

I spent the next 4 years selling my piglets and kids, taking that money to buy woven fence wire, locust posts and paying a little help for the post driving part of the fence building. I now had 3 sows, their piglets, about 10 does and their kids sharing this tiny barn. It was a mite crowded on rainy days! But they had a couple of acres turn out. 

In 1988 I sold a local timber baron the "right of way" to use my road to haul out timber from 77 acres of landlocked woods behind me. In trade for this I got a new bridge, with a wood top on 6 huge steel casings, hundreds of tons of gravel on my road and enough lumber, roofing and nails to put 3 stalls on my little corn crib. Boy I thought I was in high cotton with this building! Goats, pigs and I all thought this was a huge improvement in their digs.

Between 1988 and 1990 I had started to get into some alternative livestock, llamas, pygmy and dwarf goats, a small herd of quality Jacob sheep and 4 miniature jennets I inherited from a girlfriend who died of cancer. Well boy howdy the farm became the last roadside attraction! People around here had never seen animals like that back than. Although I wasn't having any trouble selling what I was producing many of my weekends were taken up by people coming just to "see" the unusual animals. So I got the bright idea to turn the farm into a farmpark and open to the public. In no time at all I was under construction again big time. The corn crib became the concession, a petting zoo was added onto the front of the 2 stalls where the kids could actually get in to torture, ah, I mean pet the animals. The single stall was turned into a shelter with attached aviary for India blue peacocks and fancy chickens. On the other end of the petting zoo we build another aviary for white peacocks and fan tail pigeons. The front of the old corn crib got a new wood facelift at this time too.

By the end of 1994 I had hosted over 80,000 people here,<YIKES!!> I kept a guest book signed by people from every state in the US and many other countries. What in the world they were all doing here in WV I'll never know! But it wasn't enough, my insurance was going through the roof, good help was hard to find, and I was loosing money hand over fist. I decided to close the place down and go back to living a normal life again. The country store made wonderful hay storage for 150 bales and the old corn crib still housed the barn fridge and feed cans. The first bit of construction after that was in '95 to convert the little cubby hole I had the porta johns in to a stall with a tiny little corral for the mini mule who only thought she could jump out of everything. What else could I do? I already had two walls so why not roof them? LOL This was called the ain't ok corral because it wasn't ok if you got locked in there.

Around 1999 I started making plans for quarters for a junior jack. I knew I would be keeping a son of the fatboy when the right one hit the ground.  I used it for a foaling stall and sometimes for a run in until 2004 when my junior jack finally hit the ground. The fatboy had gone sterile and this was his last foal crop<whew>. I knew Kiss was the keeper when he was still a drippy wet bundle on the floor of the stall built just for him.

In 2003  I  closed up the jack stall. Also had to finally replace that old almost flat tar paper roof on the original back portion of the barn with a real roof that had a good pitch to shed water on it.

I do so love "new wood" but I'm thinking that my 3-2007 upgrades could be the last bit of adding onto Montana's barn that I may, well might, ah, probably, maybe I will do. 2 years ago I lost my 23 year old India Blue peacock Charles, he was such a fixture and such a character here for 16 years it's still hard to believe he is gone. I haven't been able to deal with his aviary until now. It has huge rocks sticking up in the floor which just added character to an aviary but made it unsuitable for donkey habitat. So it's been closed in to be used for straw and shavings storage. While we were at that we rebuilt the old ain't ok corral fence too making that corner much more tidy looking..

Waste not want not is the theme around here so the admissions booth from the park is still in use. First it was the admissions booth. We never really needed one, most people were honest enough to come into the country store and pay their admission. So, the booth got re-invented as a rabbit habitat or the rabbitat. Three very large stackable chicken crates with trays fit in there nicely and I could display 3 breeds of rabbits in a very small space. A big hit with the kids! Now it is storage for my 25 muck buckets, 12 huge flower pots, and traffic cones. Fondly known as the outhouse.