AMISH ROOFING

I’ve worked with the Amish that live around me for years. They are hard working and fearless, especially doing roofing work and so on a job I had to do in October, I hired Peter to help. Peter had just turned 21, and my job was the first for him where he got to keep the money I paid him. Up until then all the money he made went into the family’s fund.
The job was to repair a barn roof where two ten-foot sheets of metal roofing had come off at about the center of the roof on the south side. We got there with my mini-van, carrying a very long ladder, some rope, a 12 volt drill for screwing the sheets down and a few other hand tools.
We decided to go up on the ladder, both of us, Peter first to see how slippery the roof metal was. Peter thought he would just walk on the roof up to where the repair was needed. As he stepped onto the roof, about 25 feet from the hard ground, I was behind him on the ladder. He said in case he started to slide down the roof, I was to hold onto the eavestrough so that the ladder and both of us wouldn’t fall down! Great! Well, he did start to slide immediately and I held on to the eavestrough and nobody fell down. Good!
Plan B was to throw a rope, with a weight, over top of the peak and tie it off on the other side. It was a bit windy but the rope and weight finally caught on the ripped part of the roof we were to repair. Peter tried his weight on the rope and said he would try it. Yup, so I did the same, held on to the eavestrough just in case. The caught rope held and Peter was then able to throw the rope from the middle of the roof over the peak from there, and I was able to tie it off on the other side. I carried the ten foot sheets of metal roofing up to him and in an hour we finished the work. It was another adventure in barn roof repair.