Up early and on the road this morning. No problems so far, though I've only done 300 of the 400 miles that need to be done today. Still plenty of daylight left and I see the sun is finally starting to come out. It's been cloudy and raining for most of the trip so far. Didn't mind the cloudy, but the rain was heavy at times and the wind was blowing against me most of the way. Still in NY state, I think. Emma, my GPS seems to be taking me on a round about way to get to Lexington, but what the heck. It isn't like I need to be anywhere else at the moment.

   Thought I'd get a few more pictures posted now since it is doubtful I'll be anywhere close to a WiFi signal when I stop for the night. These are of the barn at Fort Klock. Enjoy!

This is the current barn on the place, but certainly not the original. This one is a post and beam version of what is known as a 'Dutch' barn. Not sure where it got that name but it is evidently due to the way it is laid out and put together. This particular barn was dismantled on another farm, trucked over here and then re-assembled into what you see today. It is certainly a neat structure.

The new barn was brought in only a few years ago. The stone wall you see to this side of it, along the rear and on the other side are what is left of the original barns foundation. By visually looking, it appears that the original barn was at least 3 times as large as this one. It burned down in the late 1930's. The last Klock family on the place was Lipe Klock. He owned a dairy herd of about 100 cows right before the depression set in. Right around 1930 the government came in and tested all of his cows and found 98 of them, like many in the area, had bovine tuberculosis. They ended up killing all but 2 of his cows and effectively put him out of business as there was no such thing as insurance or compensation at that time. A couple of years later while walking up to the barn to milk the last remaining cows, Lipe had a heart attack and died, leaving his widow with a couple of kids and no way to make a living. They ended up moving into the city and left the homestead abandoned until the Revolutionary re-enactors took over. In the mean time, they had been employing a 16 year old boy who was a bit slow mentally. When he heard that he would no longer have a job he didn't understand all of the reasons for it and got mad and burned down the barn in anger. Even though every one seemed to know who did it, no one ever pressed charges.... what was the point after all?

But now there is this new barn, and it's a beauty. Check out the through mortise and tenon joints on the main beams and the ladder that is actually built right into the frame.

Here you see a couple of the through tenons and the wedge pins that allowed it to be dismantled and moved. Pretty good technology for 200-300 years ago.

Another view showing some of the secondary braces that are all pinned using hardwood pins.

I liked this shot because it really showed the crude axe and adz work that was done to square up wooden beams from round logs.

A view of the 4" thick hardwood planks on the floor. Thousands of cows have walked back and forth over these, and done other things, and they are still in pretty good shape. Not sure I'd want to try dancing on them, but walking was no problem.

There were evidently a few bad spots in the surface of some of the planks. Rather than replacing the whole thing they routed out a shallow area and put in a 'Dutchman' to fix it.

Another through or wedge pin through the tenon of a beam. The beam that has this tenon in it is one of 3 on the exterior of the barn that holds up the overhanging gable roof.

It's like a big jigsaw puzzle.

The wall top plate showing the roof rafters and some of the wall posts coming into it.

The roof rafters. I couldn't tell if it was a pegged half lap joint or a open mortise and tenon joint.

This is the slide lock they used on the big double doors on either end of the barn. It surprised me that one set opened into the interior while the pair on the other side opened out. I was told that this was so if snow piled up against both sides, or the wind was blowing to hard, one side or the other would likely be easier to open up.

One of the hinges holding up these huge double doors. Check them out in the 1st picture above.

A closer view of the ladder showing how the rungs are mortised into one side of the post while the other side of the ladder is tied into the beams at the top and bottom of it. There had been another section of ladder from the first floor up to this level but it was evidently lost or they decided not to put it back in when they rebuilt it.

Finally got the story on the cannon. Some of the guys in the re-enactment group did some research and found that there had been a cannon in the area during all of the battles that went on, so one was located and brought back to this site. After more research, it was determined that the cannon had probably been down, (west), at Col. Jacob Klock's house where the battle of Klock's Field had taken place. But that homestead is no longer there, although the house is still standing, so here it stays. I think it looks nice with the 13 Star American flag.