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Exerpts from past Newsletters:NBA Newsletter
Newsletter of the National Barn Alliance
Barn Yarn #8 - Barn Fresh
A most familiar term we've all heard for many years, is that positive expression "barn fresh". Meaning to be freshly brought to light from a barn. Any item that found itself entombed in a farm barn seems to become a bit extra special because of their storage spot. Nothing new to speak of adaptability for barns today. Heck, weary beams of loving barns have sheltered home treasures no less than great museums archive treasure. Multi-purpose use has always found the barn adaptive to gleaning storage space.
Many folks who survived the depression and dust bowl were farmers, and their barns were the anchor of their survival. No surprise, human nature made them savers of everything which no other generation of the twentieth century could equal. They didn't just have attics, basements, and garages. They had granaries, chicken houses, root cellars, and the king of original storage, the ever-accepting barn.
A barn breathes, so moisture can escape. A barn freezes, so moths lose their hold. Barn cat mousers have access to a barn better than any attic or other storage choice. And barns offer easy temptation to anything larger than a doorway. So becoming the saving ark, barns across America grew to harbor wagons, buggies, tractors, implements, and grandpa's car. All long before the invention of local storage units crowed the landscape.
To such an extend have barns grown to be associated with hidden safe and sound, the barn fresh term is even used for items which never saw a barn! It is thanks to the careful stewardship of their land and equipment, that barn fresh means a good thing. Farmers hoisted their old wagons on ropes high into the barn for safe-keeping, and whatever could be stored by lifting up out of the way of daily farm operations. There are barns nearly held down by ropes dangling harness, chairs, and gunny sacks full of what "might come in handy some day". So filled have some barns become, they no longer served for farming at all.
In deed, the barn fresh expression has joined the most positive of Americana standards. Barn fresh has been the discovered location for so much. Airplanes in the Smithsonian to some of the nations rarest automobiles. Plus all sorts of contraptions and stored inventions which seem partial to the environs of barns. Hardly a barn's history or story is without some wonderful old object saved nesting in its walls. The barn has quietly played a truly major roll giving back the relics in the march of America.
Yet we have never given the barn any credit for this namesake term. We cherish what barns have slowly incubated to pop freshly to daylight. We'll restore and put glorious barn finds back to life. Well now, isn't it maybe time to finally give thanks where credit is do? To apply the same excitement to the barn itself? To restore or fix that barn seems a given. We can surely add worth to this barn term by freshening our barns' survivability in wood, mortar, shingle, and paint. We can save these gentle giants which have taken care of us and our treasures in every way. Saving and restoring the barn could gain a new meaning to the term. By gosh, I can just see a bronze plaque on a barn beaming bright again to read in pride: Barn Fresh!
Roger Hubert
Barn Yarn #5
The last barn dances of fall harvests slumber memories in the lofts. The Kansas Barn Alliance put another rewarding Barn Fest into the trails, too. And again, there's just so many good times we remember where a barn played our funny bone. Two years ago, past KBA president Bob Marsh suggested we start having a "funniest barn story" contest, and it ought to get rolling to where we all start asking and bringing such barn stories together. These gems are barn history, too.
The antics, mischief, and unplanned hilarity a barn plays host, could surely make a book volume each year. This year's Barn Fest brought a dandy without warning: As a restored barn photo was being shown, a neighbor to the barn was at the Barn Fest and recalled how as teenagers they used to go "party" in this abandoned farmstead. They decided to build a fire in the old kitchen stove to warm up the place, but smoke quickly filled the rooms as the chimney seemed to be blocked. Trying to clear the jammed obstruction, they went outside to discover they had set fire to a coon nest in the chimney....and out came a flaming coon high-tailing to the barn. Well, suddenly a race was on...to catch this coon luckily before it reached the barn to catch it afire!! Nothing like a little partying to nearly light the sky. Is that called instant barn preservation?
Over in Rush County, on an old century farm, the owner recalled as a 5 year old farm kid, his job in the barn at milking time. In the evening, it was to open and close the north sliding barn door. It let each milk cow back outside as dad finished with each cow. One time he was just a little too slow pulling the door open as the last bessie scrambled to get back out. The bolting cow's head was out the opening door but her wide side knocked the door right up off it's track and the big door flattened the wee fella to the ground. In this young mind, the huge "oh,oh" of thinking he'd done something wrong and "broke the barn", had him afraid to holler, even though pinned under the weight. It grew dark and no little Virgil showed up for supper. As twilight darkened, something must be more than usual sidetracking, and the parents started hunting the farmyard. The heavy sliding barn door on the ground was seen, and the fearful lad quietly enduring underneath. To hear the tale from this boy now 88, told in smiling humor, of being so scared of breaking the barn. And he added, it broke his right arm. Gosh, the real pain that made a happy late supper, and no broke barn! Today, this farmer still keeps the barn in top shape from breaking.
How can one leave out a Kansas tornado. After a hard fast twister bit down on a farmstead with first hay-cutting put up, the barn had been yanked off its foundation like a sofa slip-cover. While the barn looked strangely intact, it was on it's side in the barnyard. The new stacked bales of hay were still left all in place where the barn once stood, like a green shape of the barn. Neighbors from all over the county came to view this oddity. But the owner's stern wife couldn't understand why so many folks would laugh when looking at the back side of this barnless stack of hay bales. Upon going out to this opposite side, after days of visiting giggles, she spied something up on the second level floor of hay bales. Boldly setting in a perfect row where an outside wooden barn-side had been their backing, were bright bottles of forbidden brew. Once behind bales, they were now front and center shining. A second "tornado" returned to the house, but it is still belly laughs many years later to their family.
Perhaps a real hint of farm attitude in living can be gleamed from farmer's grinning stories with old barns. That fire, broken arms, and tornados can even be the salt toward fun memories. Gather your barn tales. The funniest rural humor may be snoozing in that barn stall. Lordie, I can just see a row of brightly labeled bottles framed way up along-side those square hay bales!
Roger Hubert
Barn Yarn #4 - Grandpa's "Patchwork" Barn
Every good barn owes many a "patch" to the artful ingenuity of using old tin cans, tin signs, old license plates, and the ever-popular Prince Albert tobacco tins. While it's an easy knot-hole plug to use a tin-can lid, few of us realize the use of tin patchwork in a barn was not just casual grabbing of a quick-fix. Tobacco tins were a thinner gauge of metal and lent themselves to the small detailed and bended needs. Old license plates were stiff and ideal as wind-proof shingles. A heavy-gauge tin sign could just about make a wooden livestock door "kick-proof". The availability, thickness of the metal, and cleverness of the barn patcher, could bring the wear and tear on the building nearly to an art.
Such early conservation habits have saved a world of rot from barns...and saved the very barns, too. How many of us know these handy repair materials were often so carefully picked? Our industrious farm grandmas kept the kid's clothes patched, and when worn out, created the dazzling treasured patchwork quilts. Grandpas were using scrap tin the same way on the barn. From "appliqué" on the dairy stanchions, to trim around splintered wood handles, tin appeared as needed. My own grandpa, for one, while keeping the barns painted, and the floors limed, was always careful to not paint over his bright-work of tin patch repairs.
Today, we see these tin advertisements peeking back at us so often in great old dimly lit barns. They can tell us much about the builders and owners of the barns. No different than a cotton quilt, these tin patches speak of pride. The "make-do" becoming an expression of the art of living. And like quilts with different fabrics, these tins can read like a book, of the barn's life.
Patent dates or years issued, give ages. The products used on the farm call back from salvaged tin cans, and signs of local stores long gone, boast their trade. The number of tacks and nails to a patch are as the closeness or sparseness of stitches on a quilt, done with knowing hand, or a' learning. When the tin patches are facing with ad side showing, and reading upright, you know there was thought going into these repairs, and a grin, for sure.
We've all seen the occasional example of a barn side, roof, or whole building covered in license plates. On a farm up northeast of the town of Lincoln, Kansas, the outside of the barn shop is covered on all four sides in just 1934 Kansas auto tags. One can quickly figure about when they were applied, and a story waiting, too. Quilts using only certain size tobacco bags, salt bags, etcetera, was often, and both barns and quilts have had plenty of gunny sacks as lining for warmth. Hard times and simple solutions.
So now, when you next explore a barn, there's another "page" of information awaiting to whisper back. Preserving and restoring a barn can certainly include the notice and preservation of its patches. Any of the mended things and worn areas to a barn tell of their use and history. Just as grandma kept a basket of special rags for quilts, grandpa never threw away a Prince Albert can. Sometimes he'd even add a tin patch to balance out and please the eye. Grandma said he was competing with her busywork sewing, and laugh.
Perhaps the barn is the last silent "gallery" to folk arts. Seeing the idea of some or our barns becoming host to the painted logos toward our sesquicentennial seems a natural pairing, as many designs are from patchwork quilts. Symbolically, to make a quilt toward more life, or to patch a barn for more use, both are in the winning qualities of farm ethics. Painting a quilt design on the side of a barn for awhile to celebrate the grand role of barns in our rural history, is reflecting these deeper layers to honor.
A barn, with all its patches, in so many ways is a library to the farm saga, if we are keen to discover and embrace such. It begs the question... in just knowing why a good old farmer would never throw out a tobacco tin, ...why do we ever dare throw out the barn?
Roger Hubert
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