Beyond

I hope I never lose my sense of wonder. If that makes me naive, then so be it.

Monday 2 April 2007

barns and birds

There is a bird in our chimney. It is fluttering about in the space between the fireplace insert and the chimney wall; we can hear its wings beating and its little claws scratching. I feel awful for it but have no idea how one removes a fireplace insert. They're pretty permanent things, to my reckoning. I doubt if it can fly up on its own.

On my way home from the conference on Saturday I called D to let him know I was en route and asked him how his plan of getting gravel for the driveway had gone. Turns out the gravel place (quarry? I don't really know what one would call it.) had closed early so there was no gravel to be had, and D wanted to do some work outside. So, what does a person do who wants to accomplish something? He tears down a barn, of course!

We have several barns and outbuildings on our property:
- the "main barn", a huge old log barn with 3 cribs (yes, that's what you call the divisions in a barn, apparently), my favorite of all the barns thanks to its open lofts and immense graying cedar logs. To sit there on a summer day, perched on a massive old beam, feeling the light breeze and watch the barn swallows as they dip and soar in and out is a nice bit of peace. To do it with a cup of tea is even a bit nicer. Raccoons seem to make the loft their maternity ward, but otherwise it's a quiet place.
- the pig shed, named after its former use but since renamed the "chicken coop" as the hens took up residence there
- "the gym barn", which was once the granary but is now home to our sports equipment and D's weights and workout equipment
- the milk house, where farmers once set the fresh milk to cool and separate, now empty but acting as a lovely backdrop for our vegetable garden
- the "two storey shed", a beam-and-plank building that serves as our most functional storage area, has a workbench in it, and was the location of an outdoor family Christmas party we had last December. It looked amazing, cleared out, swept clean and with fresh greenery and white LED lights all around.

Then there's the "falling down" barn, named because the year before we bought the farm (ha ha) the roof had apparently blown off in a storm. Every thing I've read or heard says, when a barn loses its roof integrity, it's just a matter of time before the whole thing is useless and rotted. So a couple of summers ago we started to bring it down so that the old cedar timbers might be salvaged. On Saturday D decided it was time to get the rest of it down. He and my sister and the tractor attacked it and sure enough, it's almost right down to the ground. Not a lot of cleaning up happened, but most of the tearing down is done. So this week I plan to do some of the cleanup and maybe get a dumpster here to take away the useless stuff.

Well, I had been planning to start working out again. Guess weight training won't be an issue.

1 comment:

rancherj said...

a fire will make a bird go up
Hot air rises! :-0