Sometimes you have to look deeper to see a hidden gem. When admiring the colorful trees along the roadside, a small opening in the brush and trees gave a glance of something hidden and you just need to take the time to backup and investigate a little more. Finding the one small opening, nestled against a colorful slope, a farmstead across the valley floor could be seen by zooming in.
Course since I am short, I was grateful that my camera view finder would tip down so I could shoot over my head. That is much easier and safer than setting up a step ladder in the middle of the road to take the picture!
It is hard to estimate the age of this barn, but it hasn’t aged as well as yesterday’s round barn. Even the tin covering the original wooden shingles has been battered by the elements. I wonder how many loads of loose hay would have been lifted up through the loft door on the hay-forks. I’m sure there would have been some kids playing in that hay loft and maybe day dreaming out the door watching the clouds go by.
Round barns don’t have to be completely round to be classified as a round barn, as in this octagon barn in southwest Wisconsin. And it is hard to believe that this barn was built in 1893. It looks in great shape for 120 years old but it reflects the care of the farmers past and present who lived on this farm.
Only a very faint hint of red paint is showing on this old barn that has been weathered for many years. The lightning rod is even bending to the years of weathering and use.
This faded red barn must have had its doors open most of the time as the less weathered boards are where the open doors would have protected them. And I wonder what sign would have grace the barn above the doors; was it a family farm sign with the names of parents and children and the type of livestock raised or was an advertising implement sign?
Yesterday I posted a barn door, so I thought today I should post the full barn with all of its doors where the farmer has gone in and out for years. And I wonder how many critters have escaped through unlatched doors.
Old Barn Door
Farmer passes through old barn doors
On his way to start morning chores.
Herd of cows are munching their hay
And from the corner comes a neigh.
A birthing might cause a delay
And a lost calf brings much dismay.
From the straw a kitten starts to explore
As litters had done for years before.
The barn has gone from white to dark grey
Weathering years makes it tough to stay.
Through the cracks comes a bright sunny ray
To announce the start of a new day.
The laboring work and stress he ignores
Farmer is living the life he adores.
“O beautiful for halcyon skies, For amber waves of grain,” was a start of a poem written by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor, who took a trip in 1893 to teach summer school in Colorado Springs.
Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the “White City” with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings; the wheat fields of America’s heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 16; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Zebulon’s Pikes Peak.
On the pinnacle of that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem, Pikes Peak, was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, to commemorate the Fourth of July in which the poem was titled America.
Amended versions were published in 1904 and 1913, in which the “O beautiful for halcyon skies” was changed to “O beautiful for spacious skies” and the music we have associated with the poem was composed by a church organist and choirmaster, Samuel A. Ward.
Just as Bates had been inspired to write her poem, Ward too was inspired to compose his tune. The tune came to him while he was on a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in New York City, after a leisurely summer day in 1882, and he immediately wrote it down. He was so anxious to capture the tune in his head, he asked fellow passenger friend Harry Martin for his shirt cuff to write the tune on. He composed the tune for the old hymn “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem”, retitling the work “Materna”. Ward’s music combined with Bates’ poem were first published together in 1910 and titled, America the Beautiful.
Ward never met Bates as he died in 1903, and he never realized the national stature his music would attain. Bates was more fortunate, as the song’s popularity was well established by the time of her death in 1929.
Barn Doors
