In the calm of a sunny summer day in Richland in Oswego County, the banging of hammers, gnawing of hand saws and humming of a generator filled the air. More than 60 Amish from Oswego County and northern New York on Wednesday walked the grounds, climbed ladders, tossed lumber and nailed metal roofing materials for a new barn they...
Amish volunteers from Central and Northern New York work Wednesday on a barn on Eli Zookâs farm in the town of Richland. They started to raise the barn at 8 a.m.; this photograph was taken at the early afternoon.
In the calm of a sunny summer day in Richland in Oswego County, the banging of hammers, gnawing of hand saws and humming of a generator filled the air.
More than 60 Amish from Oswego County and northern New York on Wednesday walked the grounds, climbed ladders, tossed lumber and nailed metal roofing materials for a new barn they are building at Eli Zook’s farm on Clark Road.
Zook has owned the 27 acres for about two years. Black buggies that brought his fellow Amish were parked near the driveway and horses munched hay out back as the men worked to raise the barn.
“They started about 8 and most of the outside is done,” Zook said taking a short break in the early afternoon . “It’s a small barn that I’ll use to store hay and machinery.” Chris Loveland, of Camden, was one of about five non-Amish — or English as the Amish call them — helping with the project.
“This is almost a spiritual thing,” he said watching the Amish scurry around the top of the barn. “I will take a vacation day if I’m invited to help.”
He said the Amish are so good at carpentry that they could probably build a barn with their eyes closed.
“They do everything themselves,” Loveland said. “They even made the steel roofing — they got rolls of steel and then they form it.”
The Amish — all dressed in blue shirts, dark pants and traditional straw wide-brimmed hats — got the metal to the roof by clamping one end to a vise grip attached to a rope. The men on the roof would pull on the rope to hoist the metal sheets to the roof.
For lunch, the Amish women cooked up chicken and mashed potatoes for the men. They did some sewing while the men finished up the barn as small children played nearby.
Loveland said while building a barn is work, the Amish and non-Amish consider the work fun. At times, the men joked with each other; one stopped to pull a straw hat down over another man’s face.
“I do this for friendship,” Loveland said.
Contact Debra J. Groom at dgroom@syracuse.com, 470-3254 or 251-5586