Grandma’s barn was a world unto itself. I spent many hours there during the summer. I loved the haymow because I could see forever from up there and find all sorts of unexpected things. The smell of hay permeated the area and the soft piles of it made a good nesting place for renegade chickens to lay eggs. Grandma watched to make sure they didn’t make nests up there. If their cackling gave them away she was up the ladder to roust them out and take the eggs.

I often found kittens up there where a mother cat had birthed them and left them in safety. I loved to watch them play or sleep piled together in a furry ball. If I made too much noise or disturbance mama would come back, calling with each step. I’m sure she didn’t appreciate my visits much and didn’t trust me alone with her babies.

Barn swallows nested over the feed door inside the barn. Watching the parent birds bring feed and filling open mouths was an endless sight. Fritz was usually right behind me and interested in everything going on. Rags got ran over down on the highway so Fritz was the only puppy left. Snuffy always stayed around the house with grandma.

The barn had three outside doors to separate rooms. One had a lot of things stored that belonged to relatives who had passed on. ( Much the same as grandma’s attic.) The middle one had grain in it and I liked to look in there for mice who would scamper away. As I remember, the last one had odds and ends tools in it but I never opened it much.

Cats would come running when they saw grandma leading the milk cow to the barn. If they were impatient and meowed a lot sometimes grandma would aim old Bossie’s teat in their direction and they could drink from a stream of milk. Grandma never laughed much but she would smile and chuckle a little as they tried to drink without getting it all over their faces. While they worked at cleaning themselves up grandma would finish milking and pour an old pie-tin full of the warm milk. When we left the barn to go to the house you could hear the cats lapping their milk. It was a happy contented way to leave them.

There was an old corn sheller in the barn that grandma would dump ears of corn into and the contents would come out into a bucket. She fed corn to the chickens, cow and sometimes the pigs. The cobs were taken to the house to start fires in the cook stove. Grandma had two huge buckets that she put pig mash in and then filled with water. She had an old paddle that she stirred it with and then she carried it around behind the barn to the pig-lot. I do not know how she carried two large buckets that heavy and that far but she did twice a day. She was just a wisp of a woman but she was strong.

I liked to tag along and watch. Grandma would take a stick and pound on their feed trough and they’d come running and squealing to eat. It was fun to watch pigs. I spent a lot of time there by myself. One pig had a large litter and after she had her fill at the trough she would go back and plop down so the babies could eat. Her contented grunts are remembered still. As the pigs got older grandma turned them out into the main pig-lot and I would crawl over the fence and climb the old mulberry tree in the center of the lot and watch them. One time the old sow took a dim view of me being so near and kept me up in the tree quite a while. Days…..it seemed at the time but I’m sure it was just a few minutes.

Grandma did something that I remember but I don’t know with what or why. For some reason she had a bucket of liquid and she would take a small can to dip out and then splash on the pigs back-sides. I thought she said it was for worms, but Rocky said it didn’t sound right…….even back then. At any rate she was treating them for something and after she put it down and went back to the house……I started thinking it would be fun to do. I got the can full and climbed the fence to run after them and splash……of course they squealed and made a lot of noise as they would run frantically away.

Pretty soon I saw grandma coming down the path hitting the ground every third step or so. She said, “I just thought you were doing that. You get back up to the house right now.” I was smart enough to know I’d better do as she said and not mess with the pigs any more. I’m still puzzled as to why she did that and what with but all information is gone now from her.

I can remember lazy afternoons when I would climb the hill above the house and look all over Blair. One time remembered clearly was when I lay down in the pasture to watch big white puffy clouds float overhead and decide what they were. I would watch them slowly fade apart and then rename the next ones…….when I’m having a hectic day I like to retreat to that wonderful place…….when time stood still and I was safe and secure……………at grandma’s house.

Until tomorrow,

Essentially Esther