Who Says Your Barn Has To Be Red.

Yeah, sure, a red barn looks nice. It's pretty and it makes everything around your place look idylic. Hubby and I have been building a shelter for our sheep, and while I call it a barn, it looks very little like what most people would call a barn. I would love to have a red barn with white trim boards but sometimes it is just not possible. I need a barn, and I need it now. I daily look up to the mountains and see those swirling clouds and I know there is snow in them. Each day I notice that the snow on the mountains is more and further down the sides. It is only a matter of time till those swirling clouds reach out a fist and hit us square in the jaw with a dump of snow. So while that red barn of my dreams taunts me constantly, we hurry to finish our shelter for the sheep. I haven't even started on the one for the alpacas.

Our barn is a design of mine that comes of necessity. While it is not the most beautiful thing in the world, I am quite proud of the fact that it is mostly made of recycled materials. Our little homestead has been hit hard by the Pine Beetle, and so all of those trees that we have had to cut down have been waiting to be used for some project. Enter stage right, barn! The structure is supported with 6 treated fenceposts that came from neighbours who had a few left over after building their fence. It is four feet high at the back, and five and a half feet at the front. We decided to make it low because it will be sheep using it, and while we can't stand up straight in there ourselves, we can stoop to rake out straw and poop. Sheep are low and so don't need head space. So why heat all that extra cubic footage. We then used 2x6 lumber to connect the fence posts and wrapped the whole thing in plastic that we got (free) from a local sawmill. (The plastic is used to cover the lumber when being transported). After that, we needed the bulk of the logs that we cut down to give the structure stability and weight. The logs are attached to the outside in an upright fashion with nails after having been sliced down the middle. They are side by side with as little space between them as possible. We haven't put the roof on yet. That job will be this week's work and we will have to use lumber for that. It is very rustic looking and is certainly not cute like the red barn of my dreams.


While building this structure, I have thought often about the pioneers of Canada who had to build shelters with little or nothing other than what they could take from the land. I can see that such a structure as Hubby and I have built would be luxurious by their standards. In addition, they probably would have had something not a whole lot different to live in, let alone house their animals in. It has been quite an eye opener for me to build this shelter and know that a hundred years ago a trapper and his family might have had nothing more than this to keep them safe during the winter months. Makes me appreciate what I have.

A friend of mine recently visited a farm where they live close to nature. They live off grid and so heat and light is a priority, but in building everything themselves they have maintained that creativity and beauty is also a priority. It is a nice dream to be able to do that, but you need a lot of people and a lot of time if you want beauty and creativity as part of your life when eeking out an existence with little or nothing other than the sweat of your brow and your imagination. Not everyone can pull off decoration. These people even had their greenhouses decorated with carvings and stonework.

I have been lying in bed at night and thinking about what I would do if I were moving to this country a hundred and fifty years ago and I had nothing other than something like my sheep shelter, to live in. It is understandable why people built sod houses for warmth. I think if I had a similar structure to my sheep barn for a home, I would wrap it in stone and then soil and give it a floor and one window in the front for light. In would go a small stove or fireplace for a heat source. It could be very cozy with all that soil around it sides and over the top. A bed in one corner and a bunk above for the kids would be sufficient for night time living. A table and benches, with the stove or fireplace, and a storage cabinet would be sufficient for daytime living, with maybe a chair or rocking chair to add to the comfort. But beauty certainly wouldn't be a priority, at least not right away. That would only come after basic needs were met. Perhaps during the winter when days are short and nights are long, if all our needs were met, then there would be time and energy for creativity.

I think the early settlers of Canada must have found their beauty in their surroundings. Time and work would have left them very little energy to explore the effort of beautifying their surroundings. Who has time to carve a headboard on a bed, for example, when trapping and hunting are the only ways of providing food. Summer would have been a busy time just keeping up with a garden and trying to remove stones from the soil. Carrying away roots and shrubs and weeding the plants that are able to be planted, would also zap your energy. It is no doubt a huge undertaking to provide for a family without the luxuries of today. Clothing would have to be made from scratch... sewing a seam by hand is much more time consuming than running a sewing machine down a seam. Roto tilling, and freezers have made life easy for us. Our ancestors did not have the ease and convenience of our modern day equipment. We are lucky and I think spoiled.

What it comes down to is that while some of us need the creative outlet of beautifying our world it can only come once our needs have been provided for. So in the end, if we can't beautify our own world we seek the beauty that nature provides. A sod house would have looked forlorn and dull until nature had taken it course and provided it with a covering of wild flowers native to the area. Those early settlers would have enjoyed the swirling clouds over the new fallen snow on the mountain, even as it precipitated the onslaught of winter.



So, who says your barn has to be red... beauty is in the eye of the beholder..... behold, my beautiful barn?