Decorah, Iowa, home to the Decorah Bald Eagles of global Internet fame, is also a place of particularly notable old barns. Some still fill their traditional purpose. Others have been re-purposed to hold church meetings and family reunions.
Take a break from whatever it is you are working on and visit with Ceil Miller Bouchet as she takes us on a tour of her home state with its barns that are so much more than a structure built to hold hay and shelter animals: "If These Barns Could Talk." Excerpt.
"Because I’m a granddaughter of Iowa farmers, I have a soft spot for old barns. Maybe it’s in response to the big sky of the Midwest or the vast expanses of land, but the barns of my home state seem particularly notable. Traditionally the centerpiece of any Iowa farm, these solitary structures always remind me of the labor-filled lives rural families led before agribusiness was even a concept."
I am not a child of farmers. But on the wall of my office is a faded photograph of two giggling sisters side-by-side on a wooden seat rope swing hanging from a sturdy tree and in the background an old barn and stacked wood pile. My sister and I are maybe 5 and 6. The setting is the old Meserve farm in New Hampshire. Our father served in the USNavy with the Meserve's son. We spent a week on their farm during haying season.
To keep us kids from getting in the way we were "banished" to the barn to climb on hay bales, chase chickens that found their way inside, stroke the broad flank of the milking cow that was patiently waiting near the milking pan, and make believe.
My very own make believe will come true one of these fine days when I get my own barn. I hope you come and visit. Nature and dreaming are the best rejuvenators.
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