You don’t see as many old barns along the Maine coast as you did 70 years ago. How many barns can you remember that are now long gone?
Many, like the barn at my great-great-grandfather’s farm where my brother lives today, were connected to the main house by a smaller house, or ell. Anyone who has tended out on cow friends during a January blizzard can appreciate being able to walk from the house into the barn without stepping outside.
Around here, those who got to their animals by wading through deep snow risked being photographed by Kosti Ruohomaa.
Few Maine working people could afford to replace the shingles on a large barn, and as soon as water got through to the wood in any one spot, it was only a matter of time before the entire barn vanished.
Not long ago, anyone around here would tell you that if you saw Andy Wyeth painting a sagging barn on the road between Port Clyde and Cushing, it would either fall down or be burned up for practice by the Thomaston Fire Department within a year.
Our neighbors in St. George remember Anderson’s huge dairy barn by the railroad tracks. One day a few shingles blew off in a storm. Children riding by it on their way from Tenants Harbor to Thomaston were adults before it finally flattened out and disappeared beneath the weeds. Every time you rode by and saw that sturdy portions of it were still standing, you marveled at the prowess of the men who built it.
When a horse and some kind of wagon was the only way to get around town, every home needed a sturdy and watertight barn for the horse and perhaps a cow or two. There were stalls on one side for the animals, which entered by a side door, and a place in the center for a wagon. The hay was kept above. The size of the barn was, of course, determined by the number of animals, which was an index of the owner’s social standing.
Mark Twain wrote that wealth in the Black Forest was measured in manure; the richest farmer has the largest pile of all, and “the Black Forest artist paints it – his masterpiece.”
One of my favorite paintings is John McCoy’s impression of Lou Robinson’s manure pile. You can also see through the open barn door the right rear flank of Lou’s cow, Carol, standing in her stall. Over 70 years ago my mother sent me up there with my wagon to get some manure to plant carrots, so I can never look at the painting without a whit of nostalgia. How nice it was of Mr. McCoy to capture a valuable and meaningful piece of Maine that would otherwise be lost.
A few barns have survived. My grandfather’s modest barn is still intact. It was his father-in-law’s blacksmith shop before the 1890s, and stood three houses up the road before he hauled it down to its present site with a horse, block and tackle.
Life was certainly more moderate when a man could drag a barn out into the middle of the road without worrying about how long it would take to move it less than half a mile. Of course there were no utility wires overhead then, and the trees that weren’t eaten by animals were used for firewood, so most Maine neighborhoods along the coast were pretty barren.
Even as late as 1960 my neighbor Percy Jones kept a mule in the cellar of his barn and hay in the mow. I remember the date well because I came home from college, where I’d learned to do backflips into a swimming pool, and I wanted my brother to witness this product of higher learning.
We went next door to see Percy. Captain Freddy was visiting; both were well into their late 70s or 80s by then, and you had to shout so they could hear. They declined my invitation to see me perform.
I went out into the barn with my brother, climbed out on a beam and jumped over backward into the hay. The hay didn’t give as much as the water, and I landed with a loud crack as a wicked pain shot through my ankle.
I still remember limping into the house. “When I backflipped off the beam, I landed on my ankle,” I said. “I think it’s fractured.”
“Flagship?” Captain Freddy asked, with his hand cupped behind his ear.
I shouted loudly, “I think I brok my leg.”
Captain Freddy lit up with interest and said, “Gawd. I wish I’d gone out to see it.”
Jimmy Parker has restored and rebuilt Percy’s barn, and if you were to walk up the steps into that haymow today you’d see Jimmy building a boat.
For the sake of this record, I asked Jimmy what kind of boats he builds in Percy’s old barn.
He said, “Boats that float.”
That’s good. Boats and barns that leak don’t last.
The humble Farmer can be seen on Community Television in and near Portland and visited at his website:
www.thehumblefarmer.com/MainePrivateRadio.html
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