Weathered and Watchful

We passed it every Saturday, the old weathered barn sitting just off the winding driveway down the hill to my grandparents' farmhouse. I thought nothing of it, until now. What words, what stories would an old barn have to tell about? It is in our nature to hear and then tell of the places we've been and how they make up the days and years that shape our lives.

From my childhood, I am aware that Grandpa's barn was used to store hay from the pastures to feed a small cattle herd. Those who were in my family hopped on the backs of trucks to help buck grass hay when it was ripe and ready to harvest in the spring. Yes, I can remember the teamwork it took, Grandpa driving the truck, the rest of us hooking the bales and pushing them onto the trailer until it could hold no more. And the old barn was also shelter to an old Chevy sedan that Grandpa rolled over on the way to work one morning. It rested quietly under the lean-to at the north side of the barn waiting for someone to have the time to restore it.

But what other history did that old barn hold? My father's family bought it in 1958 when he was in eleventh grade and his sister was four. The property was in disrepair at that time and the former owner was not in good health for farming. In its prime, were there once calves that bawled for their mother's milk during feeding time at the barn? Was there an old rat like Templeton in the book Charlotte's Web that meandered its way along the rafters and made its nest deep inside one of the hay bales? Was the barn painted red originally, or was this the color my Grandpa chose for it? Did my grandparents hold family meetings in the barn and was there any hide-and-seek games played around its corrals? If old barns could talk, I could earn a wealth of knowledge reaching back to its glory days.

Years from now, who will know that during the Columbus Day Storm of 1958, the wind picked the entire barn roof off and slammed it down 50 yards away in the center of the pasture? And would anyone even know that my father and my grandmother had shot a skunk one night that was eating the baby chicks in the chicken coop next to that old barn? It stunk for days I was told.

As a kid, that old barn was a place that I felt a bit leery about entering. It only had one door, in the front off the driveway that was clumsy and heavy to open. A dim light in the center of the eaves illuminated only the center of the room, and bales of hay were stacked on the left to the top of the rafters. You could always find a pitch fork stuck in one of the lower bales to break up the hay to feed the cows, and many long cobwebs hanging in the shadows of the corners. I stayed far away from those creepy cobwebs. When my grandparents were away on a trip, it was our job to go across town and take care of their farm. Watering, feeding cows, mowing the lawn, making sure the irrigation was running correctly. My father showed me and my brother exactly how to break apart the hay, sift it so the cows could easily eat it, and place it in the feeding trough. We were also shown how to fill the water and he'd sometimes add grain when the steers were fattening for butcher. These stories should be passed along to my own children and grandchildren, to give them a glimpse of family farming days gone by.

That old barn and farmhouse sold over 30 years ago. I wonder how many years the new owner used the barn for cattle, hay storage, or if it was even used for farming at all? Were there still ominous cobwebs swaying in the afternoon breeze on a warm summer afternoon? Did the willow tree's long branches still whip back and forth against the weathered wood siding? And would the next family sense the history of all that had happened in and around that old barn from those who had been there before them? If old barns could talk, maybe they would.