Crazy as a Loom?

The drama in this old house continues.
Tammy saw a squirrel disappear into the soffit, above the gutter on the big part of the house.
My fear was that he and his friends were partying, or taking up residence, in the attic. I feed the birds all year long, so I have some pretty fat, healthy squirrels.
So Cory, who does tons of work for me, came over and climbed up in there, through a trap door in the upstairs hall.
Do you see the wire going out through the wall, over the eyebrow window? There is a light outside, way up there in the peak of the roof. I asked the previous owner how you turned that light on........she said, oh, it came on when you turned the hall light on inside.
Hmm.
Guess I am glad the bulb burned.
This is what the attic looks like in a 200+ year old house.
And unbelievably, no squirrels. The hole is in the soffit, but not into the house.
He did find some questionable wiring up there though, which he spent a couple of hours doing over, and doing right.

Aren't these old wide boards incredible?

Two empty oil cans up there, and that is it. Nothing else up there. But it makes sense really, that no one would want to crawl up through there with stuff to put in storage. Especially when there is a barn. And back in the day, there were about 4 barns out back.
Now there is just one.

Now back to MY barn. The one that remains.

Number 1 daughter came to help me with the "sorting of the selvedge". It was hot, and it was incredibly difficult. We were at it for about 5 hours, finished the second bale (Tammy and I did the first one), and got half way through the third bale.
This is turning into a huge job, and somewhat of a monster. Don't tell my husband, OK?
He warned me.
Daughter is threatening to charge me by the bag. Ranting and raving about how she and her sisters are going to have to get rid of all this someday, which kind of reminds me of what I used to say to my father.
Except that he had furniture, and junk, with an antique or two thrown in every once in a while.

Anyway, here is the waste from this bale. It was incredible.
Tammy and I bagged the waste from the first bale, which took forever, and then we had to take it to the landfill.
But Brooke suggested we investigate the use of a dumpster. We did, and they brought it right over.
Here's Ava, who thought that she had the smartest Mimi in the world when I brought her a ladder, so she could see inside the dumpster.
Brooke said it was a wonder I didn't put her in there.
Imagine that.



Then once they were bagged, we had to drag them into the house, and find some place to put them.
:)

And believe me, this is only a small part of what we ended up with.

Ava was a princess the whole time. She amused herself, and amused us.
She's a great kid.
Isn't is nice that she will have memories of spending time at her crazy Mimi's studio?