Our Brown Barn

An old barn. If only they could tell us the stories they have witnessed. What would those old buildings have to say?

The farm I grew up on had a big brown barn and wooden corals for the cattle and horses. It was a landmark that you could see from the air back in the days when the photographers flew over in little planes then peddled their aerial photos of all the homesteads by driving door to door trying to convince the farmers that these were images that needed to hang proudly in their entry to document their farms over the years (or maybe that is just how it was at our house?)

When I read picture books with all the red barns and white fences, I remember asking my mom why ours was different. She said it started out red, but when it was time to repaint, she didn’t want it to look the same as everyone else’s and besides, our house was yellow so brown was obviously a better match. It was the 70s, so looking back I can see her logic.

That barn was a part of our every day. We traversed through it to feed the cows out back. It’s where the horses sheltered in the winter and where the calves came in from the cold. There was one winter when a particularly worked up and feisty bull took the corner off on a bit of a rampage and there were more than a few bit marks along the wooden stalls from when the horses got bored. Occasionally the pigeons found their way into the loft and one winter an owl followed to take care of that problem. There was nothing new in that barn, in fact, it was a dark place filled with discarded bits of machinery on one side, a few spare tires and old garden pots. The doors took a big heave-ho to drag them along their rusty and dented tracks. The hay loft had soft spots on the floor where you had to tread carefully or so my sister and I were led to believe. It was the kind of place that you entered and had to wait for your eyes to adjust to the dim lighting from the occasional bulb hanging by a wire.

And it was magical. I loved that barn. It was a place of old treasures and curiosities, of stories and feelings of days gone by. It felt like an old familiar character with a wrinkled face and a deep smile where you might clamber up onto their knee to hear them whisper a tale that would have you hanging on every word. We made up several stories in that place over the years, imagining the olden days, pretending to live in it, hiding our treasures in the nooks and crannies as we searched for clues of those who had been there before. Those old barns must have so many stories. Perhaps I will go back someday and listen once again to their tales, but for now, every time I drive past an old landmark, I am taken back into my imagination, wondering just what stories that old barn might tell and grateful that I had a few of my own to add to the mix.

My childhood farm with its brown barn.