SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE WESTERNER

The barn

by Larry Gabriel

The barn is a unique place. The barn served many purposes in rural life and was a top priority investment to our farmers.

When the sky is grey with swirling snow and the temperature hovers around zero and the wind is howling, stepping into a well-built barn filled with hay and animals is a joy.

The amount of warmth produced by the livestock is surprising and a welcome relief to the owner checking his stock. The animals are safe and they know it. Maybe all living things need a barn of some kind when the storms of life are raging. The barn is a safe haven.

The aroma of alfalfa, feed and animals is largely unnoticed at the time, but lingers for decades in the back of a mind and may return when recalling memories of youthful times spent in a barn.

After a month or so of deep winter, children escape the house and turn the hay loft into a gigantic playground, swinging from the hay ropes and wrestling for king of the hill.

When the blizzards roll down the plains and snow drifts become too deep for equipment to move feed, the livestock are kept safe behind the barn.

Windbreaks around the barns shelter animals from the storm. Hay thrown from the loft by hand provides the calories to keep them warm.

Back when almost every farm produced both grains and livestock the barn was the heart of the farm and often it cost more than the house. The enormous red barn with a gambrel roof was a necessity to many in those days.

Our language is filled with hints of the importance of the barn. If you leave the door open someone might ask if you were "born in a barn". If something is really big, it might be "big as a barn". If something was very exciting it might be a "real barn burner".

"Barn raisings" were important community social events and a means of welcoming new members. It is too bad we don't have more barn raisings, because they provide a social benefit worth more than the barn.

Nothing bonds people with each other like working together to build a tangible product. That is how we "build" farm families. That is how we "build" our communities. We bond through joint efforts.

The process of building something together creates the bonding of a family or community. The thing being built is less important than the process.

Each community and each new generation in that community needs a "barn raising".

There are many efforts to preserve the old barns, but maybe it is time to build some new ones.

Larry Gabriel is the South Dakota Sec. of Agriculture


Axe handle reputations are made in the line of duty

By Julie Carter

Reputations are made in a number of ways. Some are established over a life time of works, good or bad, and sometimes the distinction will come from a single moment in time without real word or surmised deed.

The bitter cold that has gripped the country this week induced thoughts of those folks that daily handle an axe. Breaking ice on livestock waters and splitting firewood are a few basics in this world that remain the same today as they did a century or more ago.

Out in the panhandle of Texas, as I write, stand thousands and thousands of cattle on wheat pasture in someone’s care. And yes, this very morning, those folks are making their “circle”­­­ -- breaking ice, checking hot fence wires and a given, doctoring sick yearlings. Sub-zero temperatures are no excuse to stay home by the fire.

A few years back a couple I know was well into a long winter of heavy snow with plenty of ice and mud. They had been in the wheat cattle pasture business for a number of years, had good reputations for be fair wheat traders, quality pasture managers and just being generally honest folk.

On this particular day, the little woman, in both name and size, had made her circle which involved 65 miles of road driving. It entailed riding through 18 pastures checking for sick cattle and breaking ice on the troughs in each pasture. She had one more to go. Her good roan horse had been in and out of the stock trailer so many times on that long day he decided to not be in a particular hurry to unload.

Her “tired” was hanging out as much as the roan’s but the job was to be done. Standing on the fender of the trailer and reaching through the slats, the cowgirl used the handle end of her ice breaking axe to try to snare the reins on the horse’s neck. While she was encouraging him to back out of the trailer, the farmer who owned that particular wheat pasture land happened by.

The cowgirl had the business end of the axe in her gloved hands, but the farmer was unable see that. He slowed his pickup to view the action then quickly sped away as fast as the snow and mud would allow. Not giving it a thought, she got the horse unloaded and went about her business.

The next morning midway through her circle, she stopped by the grain elevator to get a hot cup of coffee and thaw out by the ever-blazing stove. As she walked in, all the domino players stood up. Ordinarily she would only get a nod and a hello from them, so the standing ovation caused her to ask what was up.

“Lyndon was by here yesterday and said he saw you hit your good horse in the head with an ax because he wouldn’t unload,” said one of men gathered at the elevator. “Everybody knows how much you love that roan horse, so we figured if you are that tough, we better come to attention when you walk in.”

The cowgirl just laughed at them and never told them any different. That little smidgen of fear could be used to every last bit of advantage over the coming years.

copyright Julie Carter 2005