I’m continuing my love affair with great barns, they are disappearing rapidly, like the family farms they were built on. The old ones collapse in heavy snow, are blown over by hard winds, are sold to builders and carpenters for the wood,  or knocked down by new home owners, destroyed by fire, collapsed of their own weight, rotted by the rains.

Some just tilt over until they collapse onto themselves.

The second owners who often buy the old farms when they go under have little use for barns, they are a hazard and expensive to maintain. You can’t keep cars in them and there is no need for hay.

Insurance companies never like them and get them knocked down whenever possible. When I was looking for insurance for Bedlam Farm, two insurance companies said they would only insure the farm if I knocked the barn down. I said no.

The old barns are the habitat and shelter of all kinds of creatures – barn cats, rats, mice, bats, swallows, spiders, raccoons and skunks. If you close your eyes in an old barn, you can hear all kinds of creatures skittering and flapping around.

I have a great compulsion to photograph them whenever I find them, they just ooze character and memory. As I’ve written, I see nostalgia as a trap, a hiding space for people who hide behind their fear of change.

Everything has its time, including us, and it is not for me to say the great old and beautiful barns should stand forever.

That is not up to me. I hope they outlive me by a good stretch, they connect us to our heritage and memory in very powerful ways. Some of them will live her, on my blog, for a good long time I hope.