Construction cowboys: the art form of Amish excavation

They aren't kidding when they say the Amish are the fastest builders in the game.

PART 3

(continued)

It was a gloomy, bitterly cold March day when the wind cuts through even the most insulated of jackets. It’s the kind of weather that people down south shudder to think about… a cold that’s so permeating not even a hot cup of coffee or a warm, long shower can get the damp chill out of your bones.

By the time March rolls around to Upstate New York, the people here haven’t felt the sun on their skin since October. The sun peeks out more regularly during February, sure, but the angle of the sun in the sky is so low that the brightness doesn’t feel like the real thing. It feels like a fake sunshine, teasing your body for the Vitamin D it so desperately craves.

Normally, the average New Yorker is pretty cranky during the month of March. Everyone is counting down the days until the first spring warmth envelopes the land. In Upstate New York, that first warm day could be over a month away still, and the people here know it.

I learned quickly that day that the Amish are not normal people. Up until this point, I had been communicating with two Amish brothers, solely, about the barn project for my 6.74 acres of rural land. On this day, I was about to meet their entire Amish community and learn that the pure divine joy radiating out of the two brothers could be found in every single person from their village.

I was expecting the crew to be somewhat irritable having to excavate outside in the conditions we had that day. That was surely the norm for all prior construction projects and repairs I had witnessed.

If you’ve been reading along with me since part 1, you already know where I am going with this. It was yet another plot twist in my story with the Amish. I pulled up to my property that day at 8:30AM to find an Amish man, Mervin, fully immersed in expert-level excavation.

Knowing they had to travel 1.5-hours by car, I did not expect to see him as far along as he was that early on such a brutally harsh winter day. I quickly jumped out of my Jeep to ask if I could get him anything. Their driver kindly pulled me to the side to give me the lay of the Amish land.

“These guys like piping hot black coffee,” he said to me. “No creamer, no sugar. And they’ll drink gallons of it. I’m not kidding.”

Their driver is a jovial, likable, and funny middle-aged man, so everything he shared with me was done so with smiles and giggles (they have more than one driver - but this was the one I chatted with daily).

“Ok, I am on it. I am going to the Stewart’s in town and will be right back,” I said.

I sped to town to get large coffees and breakfast sandwiches.

This is what you do for construction workers, Alex. Cmon, you should know this.

I returned as quickly as I could to give Merv his grub and coffee. He was so in the zone widening the turn in my driveway when I returned that I had to wait about 20-minutes until I could flag him down. I did not want to interrupt what was one of the most incredibly focused construction spectacles I had ever seen.

We fondly referred to Merv as ‘the machine’ as the construction project wore on. This man widened the turn in my driveway by 20-feet, coordinated the gravel drop-off, placed and cut the fabric, and did it all before 10AM that day. Widening the driveway was not part of the plan, by the way. He was supposed to jump right into clearing the land for the foundation. But, the first gravel truck got stuck in the turn before pulling up the hill, which is when Merv sprung into action, suggesting he dump the load at the turn instead.

He did this to not interrupt the flow of shipments that day.

I am not exaggerating when I say that in all prior projects I have ever been part of, when something of that scale goes wrong, all parties either stall, quit, postpone, yell, demand a refund, or leave. Some of the gravel truck drivers were frantically waving their arms out of the window at the turn, ready to return to their headquarters. But, a spell would come over them, throughout this project, when one of the Amish men approached their vehicle calmly and explained how they could make the delivery. The stoic aura radiating out of these Amish men put everyone’s nervous systems at ease. It was like watching something that exists in another spiritual plane.

The First of Many Amish Cures I Observed for Our Ailing Culture

Merv returned three days in a row to finish prepping the site for the foundation pouring. On his final day, he was accompanied by two other Amish men, as well as one of their sons. This was the first time I witnessed one of the Amish fathers mentoring his son in real-time on a worksite. It almost brought tears to my eyes, watching the dads and sons work so harmoniously together. They spoke an invisible language… where one’s arm ended, the other began, extending for a tool without even asking for it.

On this very first father-son duo day, I leaned over to the drive and said, “How old is that boy?”

“You have to understand something. These guys follow their own culture. To them, it’s important to get the boys out shadowing their fathers, building lucrative skills they can use to start their own businesses by the time they turn 18,” he said.

I watched the father and son, working in tandem, smiling at one another. I realized I was witnessing a cure to something that’s plaguing our English culture today. Kids are desperate to work with their parents, shadow them at work, develop skills together, and accomplish personal development outside of the classroom. This Amish boy was over-the-moon demonstrating his commitment to the excavation craft in front of his father. I could see the pride in his dad’s face, and I could see the confidence building in the boy.

“You know, that makes total sense, that they would want to shadow their dads. It’s so rare to see this in our world today that I almost didn’t recognize it,” I said to the driver.

On that same day, the Amish community installed in-floor radiant heat coils that snake underneath my barn floor today. I would have never known to request this form of heating if I had not experienced it in person when I visited the brother’s farms. The radiant heat created a steady, moist environment that felt much better than forced, blown air. The Amish explained to me that it’s more environmentally-friendly and energy efficient as well, with heat rising from the floor as opposed to being blown out vents in the ceiling.

That was all I needed to hear!

I pulled onto my land that Friday morning to see the largest team of Amish men I had beheld on my land to date. I knew the first order of business was for me to run to Stewart’s and get at least one Box of Joe to fuel these men. I grabbed breakfast sandwiches and donuts as well. I realized these guys perform such grueling physical labor that they will eat anything.

The next few hours were what I like to call a dance. Truly. I watched these men twist, turn, hop, skip, and maneuver around each other effortlessly to smoothen and pack the concrete as it poured into the frame. There were so many things going on at once that I couldn’t possibly have studied it all. Don’t worry, I filmed most of it, and plan to watch it at least 1,000 times throughout the duration of my life.

After nearly 8-hours of working around each other to fill in the foundation, the two brothers stayed behind to buffer the top of the pour as it hardened. In case their day wasn’t long enough, one of the brothers had to stay until around 7PM to make sure the foundation set correctly. Mind you, these guys wake up at 5AM, pick up supplies from their Amish community store at 6AM, and drive 1.5-hours to get to me by 8AM. That’s the kind of hours these guys put into their businesses.

Before I departed that day, John let me know that the foundation would need to sit for a few weeks to fully dry before they could break ground on the barn frame.

“Oh, ok! No problem. So I probably shouldn’t walk on it for a bit?” I said.

“It’ll be safe for you to walk on it soon. We just want to make sure it’s totally compact before we embark on stage two,” said John.

I spent the next two weeks sitting in complete awe at the perfectly-poured concrete slab that would go underneath my building. For the first time in my life, I realized that construction is an art form (well, Amish construction anyway). One of the most beautiful art forms in the world. It brought me great joy to stare at the genius work they had done, capture it, and share it on social media. I’d sit in my Jeep and pull out my journal while looking at the slab. I’d brainstorm, doodle, jot down ideas, and let my mind spew out the most outrageous of futuristic concepts for my farm.

I didn’t have a plan for the structure or the business yet. I just knew I was in a state of complete gratitude. If nothing else ended up happening after that point, I think I would have still been filled with pure joy. I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Not even two weeks later, and I received a text from John that they would be returning on Tuesday, April 2nd to start the construction of the barn.

“Good morning, Alex! Hope you are having a great day!!” the text began. I had no idea it would take them less than two weeks to raise the barn walls, attach the roof trusses, close in the roof, place the windows, and to the outside world, ‘finish’ the exterior of the structure.

Even writing it now, it doesn’t sound possible or like I am exaggerating the timeline. Trust me, I am not. In fact, the exterior of the barn went up so quickly that to this day, I am met with, “Ah, you’re the girl that owns the barn that went up very fast on Coveville Road,” with an emphasis on ‘very fast.’ People can’t hide their lack of enthusiasm that my building crew didn’t give them a lot of time to process the change that was occurring on my vacant land.

Ah well, there’s only one constant in life… and it’s that things change.

At this point, I thought watching the foundation installation was a spectacle. I had no clue the structural construction would blow my mind into another dimension.

It was dark, dreary, cold, and rainy on the day they returned. There was an impending blizzard on the way. I thought surely they would postpone due to the forecast. Of course, a massive snowstorm didn’t stop these guys from breaking ground when they said they would. The whole crew showed up that Tuesday with a portable work shed, power tools, a skid-steer, a lift, lots of coffee, clipboards, track phones, and winter gloves (to this day, I still do not know how their fingers didn’t freeze off).

I watched men quickly and quietly get into place, each knowing their role without having to ask. Some assembled the frames, others grabbed materials, and others coordinated the wall raises with those at-the-ready to drill the wood into place. I am not sure if calling this a dance does the experience justice. It was a level of skilled mastery in action, of men who have been in the industry since they were 4-years-old leveraging a genius that had me convinced they could have done this with their eyes closed.

I knew I was witness to something incredibly special. Again, I captured as much as I could, as quickly as I could, because the team was done raising the frame in ONE day.

Not only did they raise the frame, but they also put structural braces in place for the brutal blizzard that engulfed the land the following day.

AND, to make it even more impressive, they still had their Amish team from Ithaca, New York (about a 3-hour drive away) travel to my barn to complete the custom entryway the morning before the blizzard, as it sleeted, hailed, and whipped icy cold wind across the state.

As you can see, I could probably write an entire book just on this construction process alone. It redefined what I thought was possible between a few people. I always assumed a project of this size took months - if not years - to complete. I joke that I am forever ruined after working with the Amish… because I know anything can be done in less than a week now.

The final snowstorm of the 2024 season came and went (it was formidable and dumped a few feet of snow), which means the coast was clear for continuing with the barn project. At this point, it still had not been one-month since they began excavation on my vacant land.

The sun came out in full force a few days after the blizzard, raising temperatures to the upper 50s for the first time in months. It was the first real day of spring, even if there were snow piles everywhere. If you’ve never lived in a colder climate, you might not know the communal joy people feel on the first real day of spring. It’s a pent-up energy that’s waiting to explode out of your body. It’s infectious, and it was the perfect energy to usher in a day of trusses, roofing, window installation, and ‘closing in’ the outside of the barn.

“Are you ready for this? You’re going to be in awe,” their driver said to me as I pulled up to my land. My jaw nearly hit the floor as I glanced over at my structure almost half covered in trusses by 8AM. 

Part 4 of my Amish Saga… coming next week!

To read part 1, click here. To read part 2, click here.

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