TT: “Tails” from a 128 year-old barn

Our Michigan house was a pretty old house, it was build in 1910. The barn, however, was an older structure. The barn was built in 1892 by the Johnstons. They were a big name in the small town of Rosebush. I was told that Rosebush was given it’s name because of Mrs. Johnston. Anyway, the barn was a huge Amish barn. Coming from Georgia and South Carolina, we had never seen, let alone owned, a barn like this. The barns that I saw in Georgia were mostly pole barns, little more than a tack room and a stall or two so the horse(s) could escape the elements if it chose. So, yeah, this Amish barn was an amazing sight to behold and a lot of fun to explore. The barn has two levels. The lower level has two outside corral areas, one for cattle and one for horses. Each corral led to large covered areas for the animals to shelter in. These areas could, of course, be closed off in bad weather (a blizzard). Two heavy doors lead from the outside shelters to inside the barn proper. There are four large stone made stalls for (Belgian probably) horses, and beyond that several feeding stalls, a chicken coop, and a rabbit coop. The second level of the barn had a few pens for pigs or goats, and a massive hay loft. The hay loft has to be thirty feet high at least. there are two different chutes to drop hay down to the two different sections (inside stalls and outside shelters) of the lower level. These chutes start about twenty feet from the floor of the loft. That barn had to something incredible to see in its prime. A huge loft packed deep and twenty feet high with hay, farm animals of all sorts making this huge barn look small.

By the time we moved in, that barn had not been at capacity for some time. The people before us only had a horse that lived in the barn. At our height of barn animals we had three horses, four barn cats, and twelve chickens. But, we still used the barn, and these are some of my barn stories. Enjoy. That’s the back of the barn and the little door to the hay loft.

The barn could be very creepy at night. The cold wind howling outside, banging the large wooden doors against the barn, random unexplained noises in the night (noises that were perfectly normal in the light), unknown scurrying in the barn when the lights are out. The barn could be scary at night, especially if you are prone to let your imagination get away with you. There were several times that I would turn the light out (the switch was in the middle of the barn) and have to walk out intentionally keeping my calm. One night, however, I truly scared Emily. Usually I would go out to do the chores by myself, but, sometimes, Emily would come. I would split, cut, and gather firewood while Emily fed the animals. On most nights, getting wood for the next day was my last job, after I was done I had to turn out the lights and walk through the dark barn carrying or dragging a heavy load of wood. So, my mind was trained. I gathered wood, turned out the lights, and left the barn. However, Emily was still in the loft and had no idea I had left or why the lights went out. Now she was in darkness, in a huge empty room that (I’m sure) many wild animals called home, on the second level of a large dark barn. She had called and called for me, but I wasn’t there. I can’t imagine what went through her head, we both have a pension for imagination, as she groped her way to the tiny door that opened in the back of the barn onto the hay loft. She had to dodge unknown obstacles on the ground as well as two hay shoots that dropped ten feet to the lower level. Anyway, I made it inside completely oblivious to what I had done. I stacked the wood, made some decaf coffee to warm up from the cold, and started to wonder why Emily wasn’t inside. It was then that Emily came back inside and told me exactly what I had just done.

There are a few other stories that I have about that barn, but this will be my last one for now. It’s about a possible drifter. This story took place in spring. It wasn’t the dead cold of winter and the nights weren’t completely dark at chore time, but it was definitely cool outside and the sun was setting. The first chore I would always do was feed the horses. That meant climbing the ladder up a hay chute to the loft. On this particular evening I climbed up to the loft and found the small door leading outside open and hitting into the frame with the wind. I did not hear this before I had climbed into the loft, but maybe I hadn’t noticed. But, I was curious. I looked around the loft and found food wrappers on the ground that I had never seen before and they were by a patch of hay that looked depressed and matted down, as though someone was laying there recently. I looked around the loft but I did not find any other signs of anyone. I did my chores, closed the small loft door, and went to the house. The next night, I heard what sounded like fast footsteps in the loft while I was on the lower level. I climbed the ladder to the loft, blaming my imagination, but I did not venture into the darker recesses of the loft where pigs might have been housed at one time. On the third and final night of this story, I went out to do chores, and climbed into the loft. I did not hear anything unusual, but when I looked around the loft a little I saw the food wrappers were gone (I never found them) and the depression in the loose hay had been kicked around and masked. I don’t know if there was a drifter in the barn. It all might have been that pesky raccoon for all I know, but it was pretty scary. I climbed the ladder every night for a while after that wondering what I would find waiting for me in the hay loft. Why did I have a big stick in the barn? Why did I think the chickens were locked up tight? These are good questions. And they are both because of a raccoon. As the cool Autumn changes into the frigid winter, I would transition the chickens from the outdoor chicken coop into the one in the barn. By summer the chickens always became free range, and I would lock them up at night. As the weather got colder I would start bringing their food and water to the barn so they would roost in there. One chilly night I went out to take care of the horses, cats, and chickens. I turned on the lights, I fed the horses their hay, and the cats their food. I went to feed the chickens last before cutting and gathering wood. I must have walked in and out of the chicken coop (we converted an unused horse stall into a huge chicken coop) three times, bringing food and water in and out. At first the chickens, per usual, were chowing down on their food. There was the usual clucking and squalling that went along with twelve chickens wrestling over the best position around the feeders, but, as I cut wood, the sound suddenly died away. I went to go check on the chickens, and there, at one of the feeders was an adorable raccoon. He was fat and fuzzy (ready for winter) and he was shoving chicken feed into his mouth as fast as he possibly could with his tiny little hands. The raccoon saw me, gave a cute little hiss, and shoved another handful into his mouth. I tried to chase him out of the stall/coop by stomping and running at him. Round the chicken feeders we went. After a few laps, I decided to work smarter, not harder. I went out to the wood pile and found a nice big stick. The chase was back on and this time I could give him a few good whacks. The raccoon ran out of the coop, and up one of the hay shoot ladders into the loft. That night I made sure to gather all the chickens and lock them securely into the barn coop. The next night, I found where the raccoon had returned and had pried open part of the chicken fencing around the stall. Needless to say, Emily and I worked on raccoon proofing the chicken coop after that. The first story is just a cute little thing. It was winter (I think all of these stories take place in winter) and there was a good layer of snow on the ground. I got all dressed up to do my nightly chores, and I noticed an unusual print in the snow leading to the barn. We had several barn cats, but it wasn’t one of their’s. I didn’t think much of it, we lived in farm country, there was bound to be wild animals about. I figured our big barn cat would chase the intruder away, or it would run once it heard me. The one set of light switches for the entire barn was almost dead center of the lower section of the barn, so I had to walk half way through the barn to turn on the lights. I turned on the lights, turned around, and there it was! An opossum. The big cat hadn’t tangled with it, my noise hadn’t scared it away. the opossum was perched on the side of a stall so that it was roughly face height, and (after I turned away from the switches) I was only about three feet from it. I saw it immediately and took a step back, it didn’t budge. I slowly edged away from it and toward a big stick I kept in the barn. I was able to grab the stick, keeping my eyes on the opossum, and poke him a couple of times. I didn’t want to kill the animal, it was no real threat to the horses or the barn cats, and the chickens (I thought) were locked up tight and safe. After several good pokes and pushes, at this point, I had knocked it off the stall wall, the opossum realized that the classic “playing dead” wasn’t going to work and it scurried out of the barn and back to the wilderness (or so I thought). That opossum returned the next night and I chased it out again. After a week I gave the little guy a name, Frank, and it would eat some cat food I threw to it while watching me cut wood for the next morning.