I don’t know about you but I love old farms and barns which as you can guess, extends to covered bridges. Something about an old barn that makes me want to capture it. I even have a bench made by a craftsman in Petersham Massachusetts. He said the wood was from a barn built around 1770 or just before the Revolution. So the simple bench is in part, well over 300 years old.

Are barns purely functional?

This question may seem strange but I have had many conversations with Lisa, my wife who grew up on a dairy farm in Northern Vermont. As you might guess she has told me about tractor driving and the bull chasing her across a field, and yes, the barns they had.

This barn pictured above is from Pomfret Vermont. It also directly plays into this article because what I love most about barns is the human history surrounding the barn. Not so much the history that I mentioned above but the day to day activities of the families that owned the barn. View it in my Fine Art Gallery.

We all think of a barn as a place to find horses, cows, and a multitude of other animals. We expect to see hay bales stacked yay-high for silage to add to the feed during the long New England winter months. Although today we are more likely to see hay rounds instead of the iconic classic of a rectangular hay bale. But if you drive through the back roads of New England like I do you also may see those.

Lisa often tells me about being a child and playing in the barn. there would be huge piles of hay on the ground and they would jump from the hayloft into the pile below. So as I started going through my images of barns the one above struck me. The open doors of this Pomfret Barn have this vertical line of light that I hadn’t noticed before.

I zoomed in on it and there is a swing attached to the beams above, clearly seen. So as Lisa was telling me, this is also a place of play as well as storage for hay or maybe a few animals, if nothing more than barn cats chasing mice.

What is the human history of a barn?

History in this context doesn’t mean like colonial times and hundreds of years ago. I mean the history of the families that have owned and used this wooden building we call a barn.

Here is an excerpt from a poem written by Macy Dvirnak
It is also a place
Where new life is born.
Tis safety from the night.
A barn is a place for horses,
And it is a place for cows
A barn is also a hayloft,
Full of little meows,
A barn is the Inn
Where our Savior was born
God, our Savior, Christ, our Lord.
A barn is a work place,
A barn is a play place
A barn is a great place
A barn is a training ring…
A barn is..
Well, when it comes right
Down to it,
A barn is everything!”

Something about these old buildings really catches my attention, is it the rustic wood or the history that the buildings have been through? Maybe it’s just the thought of all the generations of families that have worked, played, and lived in and around these buildings.

Maybe it’s just my curiosity and desire to explore all the nooks and crannies to see what I would find. I once went thru an empty barn and everything of value had been removed years ago and it just stood there as a shelter for me from the cold wind and rain. but as I kicked over some hay I found a small wooden contraption. I don’t know what it was but Lisa thinks it was used for skeins of spun wool.

So maybe I found a quick peek through the veil of time to when sheep were kept in this barn and the farmer would shear them in the spring and turn the wool into yarn to sell locally. The stories go through my head with possibilities and a multitude of questions with no answers.

So that is one story about one barn with a swing. It’s both a workplace and a play place and you can visit it by driving through Pomfret Vermont and keeping your eyes open for opportunities.

Jeff Foliage Folger

Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage

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