The Barn Roof We Shoveled Before Dark

Getting up there safely

I want to say something about this part, because people who have not done it think you just climb a ladder and start shoveling. You do not. A metal roof covered in wet snow is one of the most dangerous places on a farm.

I read meters for the electric co-op. I do not climb poles, but I have spent eleven years around linemen, and I have sat through more safety meetings than I can count. I knew how to tie off.

We ran the long rope over the ridge from the south side, where the snow was thinner, and tied it to the front of Mom’s tractor on the far side. Then we each tied a loop around our waists with a bowline.

I set the extension ladder on the south eave, footed it in the packed snow, and had Bjorn hold it while I went up. Then I held the top while he came.

My yellow snow jacket was the brightest thing I owned. I wore it so Mom could see me from the kitchen window. My navy knit cap was pulled down over my ears, and my long hair hung out loose under it.

The steel under the snow was cold and slick. We kept our boots on the screw lines where the panels lapped, and we never stood below the snow we were moving.

The way you clear a steel roof is you start at the top and cut the snow loose in blocks. Once a block breaks free on that slick steel, the whole slab wants to slide, and you let it.

You do not scrape to bare metal with a shovel, either. You leave a couple of inches so you do not tear up the paint and the screws, and you let the sun take the rest.

The first hour

The south slope went fast. The snow there was only two feet deep, and once Bjorn cut the first block loose at the ridge, a slab as long as a pickup let go and roared off the eave.

It landed in the yard with a sound like a dump truck unloading gravel. Bjorn looked at me and grinned, and for one second we were just two kids on a roof.

Then we went over the ridge to the north side, where the real weight was.

The north slope was a different job. The snow was four feet deep and packed like wet sand. When I pushed my shovel into it, it went in about eight inches and stuck there.

We had to cut it in steps. I would cut a block down from the top, Bjorn would cut the sides, and then we would both push with our shoulders until it broke loose.

Sometimes it slid. Sometimes it just sat there and we had to dig it out a shovelful at a time and throw it.

A grain shovel full of that snow felt as heavy as a full five-gallon pail of water. After forty minutes, my shoulders were burning, and my lower back felt like somebody had driven a fence post into it.

Below us, I could hear the cows moving inside the barn, shifting in the straw, bawling now and then. Every time a slab came off the roof, the whole building groaned and then settled a little.

That settling was the sound I wanted to hear. It meant the trusses were coming back up.

I found myself praying in short pieces, the way you do when your hands are busy. Hold, I would think, every time I put my shoulder into a block. Just hold. Just hold till dark.

Bjorn worked without stopping. I had always thought of him as a kid who lived on his phone, and maybe he did. But that morning he shoveled like a hired man, steady and quiet, and he never once asked me how much longer.