BARNS

I have always been fascinated by those big massive wooden structures you cannot help but notice as you drive through farmland. So many different sizes and shapes; majestic with a down home cathedral like look to some because of their sheer size. They appear on the horizon, Americana castles that show we the people create our own destiny. Instead of holding royalty they held life and everything needed to sustain it. Nothing spells America’s individual freedom better.

                The barn was the centerpiece of the old fashion farms. In the mighty barn was stored your most valued treasures. Your work horses, their harness and all equipment needed to run the farm. Your livestock to refresh life every spring, hay, feed etc. It is your workshop. Most everything was trusted to the barn.

                I remember as a youngun seeing a most unusual barn. It was a round barn. I was fascinated and still am to this day. I have viewed but a few like it in my lifetime. Sadly this unusual old barn was torn down for a highway project. This was before the city I live in became interested in saving unique architecture. If that project was today that old round barn would have been salvaged.

                Barns of my youth also had another important feature. Advertisers would rent barns along state highways. You would be directed to tourist destinations or the Marlboro man would entice you to try his brand of smokes and on and on. There are very few of these barn/billboards left. I’m getting goose bumps just reminiscing of a different era.

                As a child growing up in a small community, a drive into the country was exciting. Seems every farm of my youth had livestock. There were many more family farms back then. Today you see subdivisions, malls and individual homeowners with a few acres and two Toyotas, instead of family homesteads of a few hundred acres. Smack dab in the middle was the country high rise, the trusty weather beaten barn made up of the finest hand hewn oak with a rooster weathervane on top. You most assuredly would also witness a wind mill turning, harnessing the power of the wind to pump water. Now that I ponder on this, they were definitely more eco friendlier than we are today. So you have water and the barn, the necessities of life.

                You want to talk about hard work and work ethics. The family farm represents to me what America used to be all about. Self-sufficient hard working individuals that wish to be free to raise their children to run the family farm generation after generation. Creating and growing new lives and crops year after year. Working hard, sleeping well.

                At the center of the farm was the heart and soul of any farm, solid foundation and solid structure to weather obstacles with little glory. Sounds an awful lot like mothers don’t it. Huuum!!!

                                                                                                                          Farmer Glen