While we were home we had a friendly, neighboring farmer bring his sawmill over and mill this incredible cedar that we got a couple years ago from a friend of Michael's. It is old growth cedar from his grandpa's farm and it is BEAUTIFUL! We had probably about 15-20 times done what is seen here in the photo and some of the boards were over 30'' wide. It is just too cool. We have plans to make some cedar trunks for the kids, a table and a few other specialty items with the wood. I left a few large chunks to try and carve into wooden bowls. I am excited to experiment with that.
I wish I had taken a photo of what we traded to have the guy do this. We have been out to his farm a few times and it is truly remarkable what they have going on out there. He is super creative and has great ingenuity. Makes things from nothing and is able to fix/repair anything. We traded an old cement hopper Michael got off of a job that they were going to throw away and an air compressor that didn't work (which the guy knew). And also in exchange, he found someone who wanted to garden my garden while we are gone! So that's be great that she will be using it to grow food for her family and friends. She has a small place down the road on the water with no garden space, so this was ideal for her, and we are happy to have the space being used since the tenants were not interested.
We would love to have our own sawmill someday, and seeing how amazing the wood turned out only encouraged that! The guy is really in to teaching, which I think is great, and so it was also an education in the grains of the wood and the potential uses for it as well.
Here is the "before picture" (this actually was part way in... we had already demoed the stalls) you'll have to wait for months for the after...but I will try and document the progress on repairing our barn.
We leveled the floor with bagged concrete. The bid to have someone pour a new slab over our horribly cracked one was $1700... so we did it on our own for $80 and about 2 hours of our time.
There's Michael loading the concrete hopper... this is one of the things we traded for the sawmill work I showed in a previous post.
This is when it was still wet. It actually turned out really well. We didn't want it to be perfectly smooth or look too "new" because then it was stick out from the old floor. 
This is one of the same beams we have in the new house- that Michael got out of the old Dairygold Factory. I love that the barn will be "tied in" with the new house, by similar materials... those windows are left over windows from our house project too. The contractor, my dad, Michael and I did a lot to the place while we were home. The electrical goes in in a couple weeks... I am having an outlet put in for a kiln! Yey! Among other things, I'll have a great set up for doing pottery. 
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