In Gene's Weekly Posts on January 13, 2016 at 9:03 am
https://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2016/01/13/the-sanctuary-of-the-barn/
From GENE LOGSDON
A great story going around is about some
Amish boys who found a novel way to make a little extra money. Their
barn is the traditional kind, of course, with stables and hay mows and
even dovecotes. Pigeons or rock doves have from time immemorial been a
part of barnyard farming because they provide an economical source of
squab or what my mother called pigeon pot pie, plus some fly control,
and if you want, communication with faraway places. They can scavenge
part or all of their food from the neighborhood and the barnyard itself.
It seems that the pigeons in this story, that made their home in this
farm’s dovecotes, had homing instinct. The Amish boys learned that a
nearby game farm was buying barn pigeons to let loose as targets for
would-be great white game hunters. Great white hunters are not great
marksmen so they miss most of the time. The Amish boys’ pigeons flew
back to their native barn and could be sold again until they died of old
age. If that’s not real economy, what is?
As more people turn to small farming as a
business, or just for fun, or both, they are going to experience some
of the delight that those of us who grew up in farm barns cherish. And
in doing so, many unforeseen advantages, like these pigeons, will occur.
The local, artisanal food movement is reviving interest in all this
(although I haven’t seen anyone selling pigeon pot pie yet) and
therefore in smaller versions of the old traditional barn. That’s ours
in the photo above which we built for a small flock of sheep, two cows
and calves and one horse 35 years ago. (I
think the pet craze has something to do with the new interest in farm
animals too, a subject for later blogs.) These barns are built for
animal and human comfort, not like today’s factory barns crammed full of
animals with little thought for anything except how to reduce the per
unit cost of production. Barns are becoming again society’s food
sanctuary at the center of the new farming universe. As such, they give
off an aura of peace and security that is uncanny and difficult to put
into words. There are certainly times when mayhem can hold sway there
too to keep the farmer from getting bored, but for the most part,
standing in an old barn full of animals you feel a tranquility sort of
like being in an almost empty church in the middle of a quiet afternoon.
For some farmers, their barn is their church.
On such farms the barn becomes a
menagerie full of livestock pets. Children turn barns into playhouses, a
place for games of hide and seek, of swinging on hay ropes, of sliding
down mounds of hay. And of course the barn dance is still part of our
living heritage. Basketball historically seems to have started in barns.
As the mows emptied, the floor space opened up. Some say that’s why
basketball’s main season is spring. At least I can guarantee you,
basketball is still alive and well in some barns. Ask my grandsons.
The work is challenging, but pleasantly
so most of the time. Numbskulls do not last long in the barn. You know
all your animals by name. Curlyhead needs to be penned tonight because
she is about to have lambs. Make sure Trump, the rooster, is in the coop
before you close up, or he will be crowing at your bedroom window at
daybreak. Give Shorthorn, the steer, a little more grain tonight and
don’t let Whiteface push him away from it. Be sure to turn off the hose
filling the watering trough.
There are limitless ways to design these
structures to suit your needs and number of livestock. Study the old
barns. Hundreds of years went into their design and function. The magic
here is that you are hardly ever doing just one thing when you are
working there. When you are feeding and bedding down the animals, you
are making the fertilizer for next year’s crops. And oh how the cows
romp in the fresh straw you put down for them to sleep on. Happy cows
give more milk and I think have less mastitis. The clover hay you feed
has already paid for itself by supplying free nitrogen to your soil. The
hay piled high in the mow is a monument to its role in controlling
erosion when it was growing in the field. In Minnesota’s sub zero
winters, I often milked coatless because the cows and the bank barn
built into a side hill and the insulating hay kept the place fairly
warm. When we milked the modern way, with a milking parlor, we had to
install a stove to stay warm. Chickens running loose provide some fly
control as they eat fly larvae in the bedding and eat the half-digested
corn wasting in the cow manure. Cats pay for the milk you give them by
controlling mice and rats.
As you loiter after chores, you think
about how you and your barn sanctuary form a sort of halfway house
between man and nature. You are filled with great satisfaction and a
feeling of independence. The world beyond might be foundering in chaos,
but right here in your quiet barn, peace prevails…at least until Rooster
Trump starts crowing in the morning.
In
1975, Wendell Berry—the poet, novelist, farmer, activist and
philosopher—released The Unsettling of America. That collection of
essays focused on the cultural and environmental implications of modern
agriculture and the need to put intelligence before profit when it comes
to the business of farming. On October 4 on PBS, Moyers & Company
will present Wendell Berry: Poet and Prophet, a documentary produced by
the Schumann Media Center that features a conversation between veteran
journalist Bill Moyers and rural America's man of letters.
