The New Buildings - The Barn, Etc.

The Barn, Etc.

I guess "etc." is really just the outhouse.  We wanted to build an old-fashioned outhouse when we built the cabin, but it turns out that outhouses are illegal in Huerfano County.  So we built a structure that looks like an outhouse and put a chemical, camping toilet in it.  Since we mostly just used the cabin on weekends, it worked well enough and didn't use much water. 

It's pretty weathered now and needs some repairs and a coat of paint.  The cabin needs work as well.  Hopefully we can get to it in the spring.

Below are some pictures of the new 4-stall barn we have built.   Each stall has an exterior shed and run, so we can actually keep up to 8 horses here.  There is a wash bay that we currrently use as a human shower.  The horses get bathed outside.  We have a washer, dryer and refrigerator off the wash bay which are also for human use at the moment and a barn office that we currently stay in when we are down on the land.  The office has a composting toilet.

The barn has a freshwater system, a rainwater system and a gray water system piped in the floor.  We do not have the gutters or cistern for the rainwater system set up yet, nor are we saving and recycling gray water.  These are planned and hopefully will go in soon. 

 

Below are the two office doors.  One is on the south side of the exterior of the barn and the other is from the main part of the barn into the office.

The photos below show the interior of the barn office the way it is now set up as a small apartment with a sleeping loft.  The sofa and chair also make into beds for visitors when they come.

Below are the stalls from the inside.

And the wash bay with appliances...

And last but not least, the unfinished tack room with its own little wood stove which will double as more private guest quarters when it is done.

The Historic Ruins - Spanish Walls and an American Barn

Spanish walls and an American Barn

Along side the ancient Apishipa ruins are the ruins of a Spanish "sheep herder" cabin that could date from as far back as the 17th Century.  The Spanish settlers, whether they were herding sheep or not, took apart some of the beautiful ancient rubble-filled walls and used the stone to construct higher, less artful walls using only one course of stone.   Some of our neighbors have fully in-tact cabins dating from this period, with the timber roofs and doors missing.  We have only partial walls because later American settlers occupied our land and again, used the stone to construct early twentieth century structures. 

The Wilson family moved onto this land in the late nineteenth or more probably, early twentieth century.  They prospered here, cutting timber and truck farming, selling their produce in Pueblo and other more urban population centers.  They built a house on top of the Apishipa foundation that we used for our cabin, dug a well, and built a large barn using the ancient stone from the archeological site.  One of our neighbors has a photograph of the old Wilson house when they were still living in it.  It went up two stories from the top of the stone walls.  What is now our cabin was their cellar.  All went well for them until the 1930's when the well went dry and they were forced to move off of this land.  Some of their descendants still live in the town of Walsenburg.  The place was named "Wilson's Crossing" after them.  Below is a photograph of what is left of their barn.  They left behind the shell of an old Model T truck and a lot of farm debris which suggested that they kept poultry and  hogs as well as cattle.