One of my neighbors is building a new barn and I’m pretty sure that when he sat down with paper and pencil to plan out what kind of structure he wanted, he didn’t look over at our barn for inspiration.
Our barn is a patchwork of wood-scraps, corrugated metal, and other odd bits of stuff. It was built many years ago by a fellow who hates to throw things away, who saves scraps of this-and-that for the day it can be put to use (a good ethic, if you ask me.) Our barn is not pretty but it is functional, and even reasonably weather-tight. Our sheep and chickens can spend the long, drippy, Pacific Northwest winter nights in the barn. If Leah ever gets really mad at me, I suppose the critters would share their shelter with me.
When we moved here about 12 years ago, some folks gave us a couple of goats, a male and a female. At first we thought the goats were a sweet couple and we named them Bill and Louise, after my in-laws. As time passed, we decided that the female goat was indeed a fine, gentle creature, but the male goat proved to be a surly, macho fellow, big of horns, dim of wit. He used his horns to bully Louise and to batter the heck out of the sides of the barn, just bang-bang-banging away on the walls for hours. If my father-in-law had seen the boorish behavior of his namesake, he would have demanded that the goat receive an immediate name-change. Eventually, we too gave the goats away, to people with more pasture and a sturdier barn.
Our barn is one of the places I like to go with my camera. Like the bear who went over the mountain, I go to the barn to see what I can see. We have a chicken named Goldie who comes out to watch me work. I can photograph Goldie and not worry about having to get a model's release.
