After more than two years of planning, we have finally broken ground on a barn with living quarters on our country property in Indiana. This is one of the reasons it’s been so quiet on this blog–in addition to having one set of house guests after another and the usual Jewish fall holiday busy-ness, my husband and I have been shuttling between long meetings with our builder, contractors, suppliers, etc.

Here’s one such meeting, now on the building site. While the guys were huddling over plans spread out on one of the pickup truck hoods, I roamed the site, documenting construction progress.

This will be a building corner some day.
 

As I roamed about, I discovered that a building site is a photographer’s paradise. Oh, the delicious shapes and textures! I don’t know what half these things are for, but no matter, I find them intriguing.

Isn’t this tool wagon grand? It’s probably a standard thing for construction workers but for me, never having built or been responsible for building, this equipment is utterly charming.

It blows my mind that from a stack of rolled-up pieces of paper (= the construction plans it took us two years to figure out) a three-dimensional entity arises. That the concrete contractor, for example, reads the foundation plans and knows what to do. It’s another language altogether.

Men at work, making what we came up with rise out of the ground. That’s the other thing that blows my mind: that my husband and I are responsible for this. It’s exciting, humbling and scary at the same time. An act of creation.

More to follow as this takes shape!