Barnstorming

“ Upon the beams in the top of the barn the brown-breasted, fork-tailed barn-swallows have made their mud nests for years. These birds are wholly domesticated. We cannot think of them as wild. And what a place in our affections they have won! If it is the bluebirds that bring the spring, the barn-swallows fetch the summer. They take us back to the farm. We smell the hay, we see the cracks and knot-holes of light cutting through the fragrant [76] gloom of the mows, we hear the munching horses and the summer rain upon the shingles, every time a barn-swallow slips past us. ”

“ The tall green grass is waving in the fields as the wind goes over, and there is a fragrance of whiteweed and ripe strawberries and clover blowing through the sunshiny barns, with their lean sides and their festoons of brown, dusty cobwebs; dull, comfortable creatures they appear to imaginative eyes, waiting hungrily for their yearly meal. The eave-swallows are teasing their sleepy shapes, like the birds which flit about great beasts; gay, movable, irreverent, almost derisive, those barn swallows fly to and fro in the still, clear air. ”

“ Of the lurking savage foeman from whose musket it was sped. Not far off, the barn, plethoric with the autumn harvest spoils, Holds the farmer's well-earned trophies—the guerdon of his toils; Filled the lofts with hay, sweet-scented, ravished from the meadows green, While beneath are stalled the cattle, with their quiet drowsy mien. Deep and spacious are the grain-bins, brimming o'er with nature's gold; Here are piles of yellow pumpkins on the barn-floor loosely rolled. Just below in deep recesses, safe from wintry frost and chill, There are heaps of ruddy apples from the orchard on the hill. ”

“ I stand and look long at my barnyard family. I observe with satisfaction how plump they are and how well they are bearing the winter. Then I look up at my mountainous straw stack with its capping of snow, and my corn crib with the yellow ears visible through the slats, and my barn with its mow full of hay—all the gatherings of the year, now being expended in growth. I cannot at all explain it, but at such moments the circuit of that dim spiritual battery which each of us conceals within seems to close, and the full current of contentment flows through our lives. ”

“ A little farther on stands a great barn with huge mows and the big hay doors front and rear always hospitably open to the scores of barn swallows that build on the beams up next the roof. In no barn have I found quite so many swallows at home. At every vantage point on a beam, wherever a corner of a timber or a locking pin protrudes to give a support, nests have been built, generation following generation till some of the structures are curious, deep, inverted mud pyramids, topped with straw and grass and lined with feathers, downy beds for the clamorous young. ”

“ The junk pile in the barn is invaded, and the rusty plough abstracted from the midst of rakes and scythes and other farming tools. The old white horse thrusts his long head from the stall near by, and whinnies at the memories it revives, and with pricked-up ears and whisking tail tells plainly of the eagerness he feels. ”

“ There should be room between the house and barn for a score or more of large trees, which may serve, in part, to screen each building from the other in case of fire, to shade the walk between the two buildings, and, in part, the barn itself. No tree is better adapted for this purpose than the white elm. The open barnyard should, wherever possible, be discarded, for it tends to increase the wasting of manures and the cost of getting them to the field; to the multiplication of fences and flies, and to unnecessary exposure of animals. ”

“ The old barn creaked dismally as each gust of wind racked it, and loose boards rattled and banged. No created place can be more dreary than an old and empty barn.
After our exertions we soon felt very chilly. We should not have dared build a fire in the barn, even if we had had matches. Willis groped about in the old hay bay and gathered a few handfuls of musty hay, which we spread on the barn floor, and then lay down as snugly together as we could nestle, but nothing that we could do sufficed to warm us, and we lay shivering for what seemed hours. ”

“ I can think of no finer picture of rural peace than such a barn as this, the cool wind sighing gently through the wide doors, the beams stretching across the cavernous space above dotted with the gray nests, the air full of the friendly, homey twittering of the birds, some resting and preening their feathers on the beams, others swinging in amazing flight down and out through the doors to skim the grass of the neighboring fields and marshes for food, then flashing back again to the hungry nestlings. ”

“ Night and day the barn doors stand wide open, and the great barn is bursting with its heaped treasures. The wagons come and go, and the beat of the flail begins. Bright and beautiful and abundant is the cheery scene, but there is a pervading sense of accomplishment. The cattle graze in the pastures, and in the meadows where the growth is over. The harvest fields will clearly do no more. ”

“ Would he not like to return again to help rake up the litter of straw and stalks about the barn, or about the stack on the hill where the grass is starting? Would he not like to help pick the stone from the meadow, or mend the brush fence on the mountain where the sheep roam, or hunt up old Brindle's calf in the woods, or gather oven-wood for his mother to start again the big brick oven with its dozen loaves of rye bread, or see the plow crowding the lingering snow-banks on the side-hill, or help his father break and swingle and hatchel the flax in the barnyard? ”

“ After he has been standing in the barn for two or three days, he acts like a wild creature when he is taken out, and will whisk round corners, and scamper up and down the hill, as if he really meant to tear every thing to pieces. ”

“ Dashing into the barn I went to lean against the feedbox of a stall, where an old farm-horse was eating hay. The warm day outside had suddenly seemed cold and chill but in the barn it was warm again. Oh, what a lovely thing to a boy is a barn, with the rich warm comforting smell of the cured hay and the animal life, lying like a soft bed over it all. ”

“ The rain rushes down pitilessly—he creeps inside the barn or shed, and with a stick splashes the puddles. The long glaring days of summer see him exposed to the scorching heat in the hay, or the still hotter harvest field. Through it all he grows stout and strong, and seems happy enough. ”

“ Distances grow to nightmare scale, and that which in the summer was no more than a minute's bare-headed run, is half an hour's gasping struggle, each foot won between the lulls. Then do the heavy-timbered barns talk like ships in a cross-sea, beam working against beam. The winter's hay is ribbed over with long lines of snow dust blown between the boards, and far below in the byre the oxen clash their horns and moan uneasily. ”

“ At the corner of the barn the Lieutenant again performed scout duty, and his three whistles brought them to a back entrance hardly noticeable to the chance explorer of stable yards—a low door into a disused cow-house.
Softly they stole in, softly peeped into the barn. It lay placid and empty, smelling of leather and hay and horses, with barrels of grain all about, odd bits of harness, and tins of wagon grease, wisps of straw, and broken tools scattered over the floor. Broad bands of sunlight streaked everything. ”

“ Rubber boots on, hood and sack. Shed-shovel in one hand, lantern in the other. Roadway still bare, but a [112] drift as high as Huldah's shoulders at the barn door. Lantern on the ground; snow-shovel in both hands now. One, two, three!—one cubic foot out. One, two, three!—another cubic foot out. And so on, and so on, and so on, till the doorway is clear again. Lantern in one hand, snow-shovel in the other, we enter the barn, draw the water for cows and oxen,—we shake down more hay, and see to the pigs again. This time we make beds of straw for the horses and the cattle. ”

“ Like a deep groove it cuts a channel up towards the hills, becoming narrower as it approaches; and the sides diminish in height, till at the neck a few rails and a gate can close it, being scarcely broader than a waggon-track. There, at the foot of the down, it ends, overlooked by a barn, the home of innumerable sparrows, whose nests are made under the eaves, everywhere their keen eyes can find an aperture large enough to squeeze into. ”

“ Midway of the field and near the water-course arose McKinstry's barn—the solitary human structure whose rude, misshapen, bulging sides and swallow-haunted eaves bursting with hay from the neighboring pasture, seemed however only an extravagant growth of the prolific soil. ”

“ Nailed on the barn are the fostering, wind-dried, grinning trophies of the keeper's prowess—hawks, owls, jays, magpies, slender stoats and weasels, grey-pated daws and a rook or two, a squirrel, and the tails of sundry domestic cats. ”

“ A few rods on, we came to a barn, in whose open doorway stood two women threshing wheat with ringing flails. Red handkerchiefs twisted tight round their heads and down to their eyebrows, barefooted, bare-legged, bare-armed to the shoulders, swinging their flails lustily, and laughing as they saw me stop my horses to have a better look at them; they made one of the vividest pictures I saw in the Ammer valley. Women often are hired there for this work of threshing, and they are expected to swing flails with that lusty stroke all day long for one mark. ”

“ So that by day or night you could never be lonesome, unless, perhaps, on some thick night, when you could see no light, and could only hear a grating knell from the bell-buoy, and could seem to see, through the white darkness, the waters washing over its swaying barrel.
There was a good-sized boarded barn, well shingled on the roof, with hay-mows, and with room for two or three cows and a horse and a wagon, and with wide doors “fore and aft,” as the neighbors put it; through its big front door you could look out to sea. ”

“ There was an undertone of sadness and suppressed excitement, for it was in the minds of all the Hollisters that the time in the old barn must of necessity be growing brief. The fall would soon be upon them, and a need for warmth. They must go hunting for a house at once. And yet they all wanted this one day of delight before they faced that question.
At last they reached the final curve and could see the tall old tree in the distance, and the clump of willows knee-deep in the brook. By common consent they all grew silent, watching for the first glimpse of the dear old barn. ”

“ From straw and stone and bare earth heat seems to rise up. The glare of the sunlight pours from above. The black pitched wooden walls of the barn and sheds prevent the circulation of air. There are no trees for shadow—nothing but a few elder bushes, which are crowded at intervals of a few minutes with sparrows rushing with a whirr of wings up from the standing corn. ”

“ AT the end of the yard of the Muets farm, among the outbuildings, the barn gapes like a cavern. It is always caverns for us, even in houses! When you have crossed the yard, where the manure yields underfoot with a spongy sound or have gone round it instead on the narrow paved path of difficult equilibrium, and when you have arrived at the entrance to the barn, you can see nothing at all.
Then, if you persist, you make out a misty hollow where equally misty and dark lumps are asquat or prone or wandering from one corner to another. ”

“ A properly-conducted barn-raising contains the excitement of a fire, the sociability of a garden party, and the sentimental delights of a summer resort "hop." The young men are given a chance to show their agility and prowess and the girls are enabled to shine as hostesses. Although it is especially a function for young people, there are always enough old folks on hand to give the occasion historical colour and perspective with their reminiscences of past raisings—some of them going back to the days of log barns and houses. ”

“ In the fence was a wide gate to let the wagons through to the barn. And the wagons, going through, had made a track that led up past the kitchen door and past the shed and past the barn and past the orchard to the wheat-field.
Behind the barn was the hen-house, and inside the hen-house there were long poles that went all the way across, for the hens to sit on to sleep. Those poles they call roosts. In winter the hens all sleep on the roosts in the hen-house, because it is warmer there; but in the summer they like to get up in the trees and sleep out-of-doors. ”

“ And here, for the last fifty years, a kind welcome has awaited all, be they voluntary idlers or sea-wrecked men. Screened by the sand-hills, here is a well-stocked barn and barnyard, filled with its ordinary inhabitants, sleek milch cows and heady bulls, lazy swine, a horse grazing at a tether, with geese and ducks and fowls around. ”

“ He smiled and rose to lead the way. The barn was dark and cool, odorous with the freshly garnered hay. He helped her up the ladder and over the springy mows to where a rickety set of cross-bars led to the sparsely-floored beams above. ”

“ As we grope about in the barn, we cannot touch anything but what is sodden and cold, and the sour smell of wet animals is added to the vapor of the liquid manure that our beds contain.
We gather again, standing, around the props that hold the barn up, and around the rills that fall vertically from the holes in the roof—faint columns which rest on vague bases of splashing water. "Here we are again!" we cry. ”