Barn Tour
This past Saturday I decided to do something rather uncharacteristic - I did a self-guided "Barn Tour" around the county. I have a thing for taking pics of barns & churches, so I figured this would be a free pass to explore some barns & take some photos without getting the usual weird looks. The theme was "Barn Quilts", with each barn on the loop bearing a handpainted quilt square mounted on the barn. 5 barns were open to the public with special presentations including quilts, local arts & crafts, antique tractors, and barn restoration. I'm not sure what the other was. There were another 13 or so barns that were on the driving loop, and presumably the owners were expecting people to drive up their lanes & take pictures- another good reason to do the tour. Usually this is something I wouldn't dream of doing for fear of angry farmers with shotguns.
I did think the tour was somewhat laughable at first, even tho' I had decided to do it as soon as I found out about it - the idea behind it was to enlighten people on our county's agricultural heritage. Several years ago was Ohio's bicentennial year. This was celebrated by hiring an artist who painted Ohio bicentennial logos on a barn in each county - 88 in all. Last year our county's barn was razed to make way for a SUPER WALMART, a thing that I loathe even more than grubs. In fact, I won't even shop at the bastards & haven't done so for years. Scott wanted me to do the tour & then complete it with a picture of this eyesore & label it "Ohio Bicentennial Barn" and then mail the whole batch off to the newspaper. I cannot even bear to look at the damn thing in all it's atrocious cookie-cutter evilness, so I didn't waste a photo on it. But, in defense of the city where the barn stood, the mayor that shooed that whole deal thru has been impeached & replaced with someone who has a better grasp of what our rural county needs. And, I hope the folks who sold off their barn & land to make way for the dumb store are pleased with their profit - and may Urban Sprawl Hell surround them whereever they now live.
Anyway.
I went by myself since everyone else was working or had other plans or just didn't want to spend the day looking at barns. So, I set out Saturday morning with an Ohio Gazetteer & a list of barns & a vague plan of what I wanted to see. First on the list was West Liberty to pick up an orange & blue basket (to match my kitchen) from the Free Trade store, easily one of the coolest stores in the area. I had seen the basket about 2 months ago on an outing with my mom & didn't want to spend the money on it at the time. The more I thought about it, I decided that if I found something that matched the kitchen I should probably just get it. Fortunately, they still had it. The day had started out well.
From here I headed south to a farm market, the location of the first of the barns on my list. I bought a bunch of cheese and veggies and some other goodies, and was delighted to see that while the barn had its roof intact with "Mad River Farm Market" shingled on it, the barn itself was open, its wooden frame without walls. The market folks were very gracious about me wandering around it & taking pictures.
From their lot, I could see the state route running in front of it was packed, as usual, with slow-moving cars. I looked at the crossroad that I sat on, the narrow road stretching out in front of me without a soul on it, and, tho' I wasn't quite sure where it ended up, I decided that was the lesser of the two evils.
I set out on a series of backroads winding through small villages, most of which I had never been to but had heard of. I realized I wasn't missing much. The goal was to take photos of four covered bridges that I had seen on the Gazetteer. I found the first one without any problem, pulled off the road & ran around snapping pictures. The next bridge was just down the road. It was skeletal, the road it sat on was closed, and there was a trailer & a Port-O-John & the smell of fresh tar. I assume they must be planning on restoring it - covered bridges are a nice little tourist draw. But, no one was there to thwart my efforts, so I scrambled around the construction area & took pics. Then, more small towns & backroads & I found myself on a dead-end road with an attractive little bridge on it. There was a Buick LeSabre parked there as well, a sure sign of old folks, and sure enough, there was an elderly man with a small camcorder filming the bridge. We greeted each other and tried to stay out of the other's way while his wife sat in the car. I asked him if he'd taken pics of the other two barns farther north yet. He got sort of a strange look on his face & said, "Uh, yeah." Then he proceeded to tell me that they were from Maryland & that their goal was to take a picture of every covered bridge in the U.S., just because they liked covered bridges. Ohio has 122 (something I did not know) and the one we were at was #98. I thought I was doing pretty good with four in one day!!
After that bridge I tracked down the 4th, a familiar one that I passed every day when I was going to travel school. Then, I set out for more unfamiliar territory, a spiderweb of roads that would eventually lead me to the next series of barns on the other side of the county. While running down these roads, I came across a bonus item - the Bigelow Cemetery Prairie Reserve, a half acre spot of land that is a remnant of the original Ohio prairie. It is also a cemetery, as the name might suggest, one of my other favorite things to photograph & wander thru. The prairie plants were tall, covering the gravestones in a pretty way. Some of the stones dated back as far as 1843 and were in remarkably good condition, except for the broken stones which had been carefully propped against the back fence. I wandered through the mowed paths, took a couple pics of the flowers & a very nice Agriope spider, and went on my way.
I was pleased my journey had taken me this way because otherwise I never would've found the barn that was in that area - I just happened upon it by mistake. This barn was just one of the loop barns & I had to drive back their driveway to get a picture of it. The funny thing was, the barn the quilt square was on was a neat barn that had been turned into a two-car garage, but there was another barn on the property, a huge old thing with paint peeling & a silo. It was by far the more picturesque of the two so I slipped around the side of the quilt barn & snapped a quick photo of the old barn.
From here I was dumped out onto a very familiar route outside of the town of Mechanicsburg.
There were two barns in that area, inc. one of the tour barns which was my official first one
where I had to pay my $10 & pick up my "passport". This barn was magnificent & worth the $10 alone. This was the one with the quilt exhibit - over 100 quilts on display upstairs & down. I was marvelling at the condition of the grand barn, but it turned out the family had it renovated & used it as a reception hall. The roof of the barn was a half-circle & quite impressive with all the bowed planks - from the interior I managed to snap some nice shots of the curved wooden ceiling as well as a few of the more interesting quilts. I'm not much of a quilt person, but I can definitely respect the amount of labor, time & love that must go into one of these creations. Some of them weren't even of a traditional square pattern, but of flowing fields of brightly colored flowers. I showed these photos to Scott who couldn't believe that they were actually quilts. I imagine they cost a pretty penny, too! The barn was whitewashed with a red tin roof & the silo matched. Quite a looker. The house that the barn belonged to was obviously well-maintained with beautiful gardens & stone walkways.
At this barn was my one sad spot of the day, a little old woman in a walker/cart that could only see the quilts in the downstairs area, who had to be content to watch the passersby. I hope someone somehow wheeled her upstairs so she could see all the splendid handcrafted quilts up there, but I have a feeling they left her below while they went up to peruse. I felt terrible about it.
I got the shot of the other barn down the road from this one, just a loop barn & nothing special, and went back thru Mechanicsburg to follow the signs for the rest of the barns, pausing briefly to photograph a rather lovely church.
It was a beautiful day & had gotten rather warm, but I was very pleased with the way things
were going. I couldn't believe the luck I was having at getting good shots, at pulling stupid
traffic maneuvers that I wouldn't normally do & not pissing anyone off, and, especially at the
bridges, the lack of people bothering me or giving me dirty looks for pulling off into the
grass/field/driveway/ditch. Just the occasional yahoo squealing by in their Dodge pickup to
show me that their truck was bigger than mine. No shit.
The rest of the barns were back in relatively familiar territory. The first was the restoration-
themed tour barn, an ornate Victorian building with the usual rectangular barn but also a
dodecagonal barn (a new word, I assure you - means "twelve-sided") attached to it. The whole
affair was painted a muted lavender with a quilt square to match. The folks had obviously
put a lot of money into that barn to restore it & it was worth it. Housed inside the 12-sider
were the non-working stables (not on that day at least), set up in circular fashion with an
opening in the ceiling, I figure where they must've tossed the hay down from up above.
After checking out the next couple of barns, I realized I had forgotten one back in the
direction I'd come earlier, and since I had so many of them thus far, I made up my mind
to seek out the others just to finish the job. One I hadn't planned on going to as I was
there just a few weeks prior to pick raspberries. This is the Rothschild's Berry Farm, a
place that has made a killing on their red raspberries, packaging them in everything from
salsa to hot mustard to coffee. Not to mention their high-end gift shop & tidy little cafe
catering to the area's "elite" aka snooty folks. The cafe does serve up some tasty food tho', and some of their concoctions, inc. a non-raspberry (at least I think it's raspberry-free) jalapeno dip, are fantastic. Another thing I was delighted to find out is that my old friend Rusty works there.
To cut it short, Rusty is the best friend of my first love, longtime ex-boyfriend Steve, and Rusty & I have stayed friends ever since. I saw him walking across the lot as I was snapping the
pic of the quilt square & barked, "Russell!" and he beelined for my truck & yapped at
me for a while, asked if I had a coupon which I was supposed to get with my barn
tour info, and, when I did not have the coupon, he declared that, "The motherfuckers
ripped [me] off. Those motherfucking bastards." I love Rusty.
From there I drove all the way out to the barn I had missed, and when I saw it, I thought,
"I drove all the way out here for this?" since it looked like a lean-to with metal siding.
Upon reading the history of it afterwards, the barn has been standing for over 100 years
and the metal siding was added to protect the original wood. I guess not all old barns
are huge!
By then, I had missed the other three tour barns since they closed at 5 o'clock, but I still drove off to take photos of them. Much to my dismay, I realized the first tour barn, and one of the hardest to photograph from the road (which involved me darting off the busy road into a ditch, probably ticking off a whole batch of drivers), was right across the road from the farm market where I had made my very first barn-stop. I had seen the address & thought the barn was further south on the road, but, that's my fault for not paying attention, I guess. The other tour
barn was actually right down the road from me, and originally Scott had planned to join
me for the last couple barns, but by that time, all I could do was take a picture of it.
I was all barned out anyways!
At the end of it all, I had been gone for 6 1/2 hours, drove 150 miles - most of these in
my county, and fed one stray dog half of my sandwich that I had hurriedly picked up from
Wendy's. Granted, if I hadn't screwed up my route, I could've shaved both mileage and
time from my journey, but I might not have seen all the neat stuff I did. And, it was like
being on a solitary mini-vacation, very nice for me. I think I'll have to make it a point to
do more things by myself. Not that I don't enjoy company, but this time, being able to
do things at my own pace was a grand thing.
After I arrived home, I woke Scott up from his nap &, despite being very excited to check
out my handiwork from the day (not that it takes a lot of skill to photograph square
structures standing still), we set out for the fishing pond where we idled away the evening
by ourselves, drinking beer and watching the sun set. I grew bored with my bait & the lack
of bites on it, and started catching the baby frogs, fresh from the tadpole stage. Scott claims it's one of the things he loves about me. Sick, huh? Knees in the water, filthy with pond mire, small frog tucked carefully into my clenched fist, I found him beaming at me adoringly. What's not to love? They were truly the smallest bullfrogs I've ever seen - small enough to sit on my thumbnail!
A busy but fantastic day. I need more of those!
I did think the tour was somewhat laughable at first, even tho' I had decided to do it as soon as I found out about it - the idea behind it was to enlighten people on our county's agricultural heritage. Several years ago was Ohio's bicentennial year. This was celebrated by hiring an artist who painted Ohio bicentennial logos on a barn in each county - 88 in all. Last year our county's barn was razed to make way for a SUPER WALMART, a thing that I loathe even more than grubs. In fact, I won't even shop at the bastards & haven't done so for years. Scott wanted me to do the tour & then complete it with a picture of this eyesore & label it "Ohio Bicentennial Barn" and then mail the whole batch off to the newspaper. I cannot even bear to look at the damn thing in all it's atrocious cookie-cutter evilness, so I didn't waste a photo on it. But, in defense of the city where the barn stood, the mayor that shooed that whole deal thru has been impeached & replaced with someone who has a better grasp of what our rural county needs. And, I hope the folks who sold off their barn & land to make way for the dumb store are pleased with their profit - and may Urban Sprawl Hell surround them whereever they now live.
Anyway.
I went by myself since everyone else was working or had other plans or just didn't want to spend the day looking at barns. So, I set out Saturday morning with an Ohio Gazetteer & a list of barns & a vague plan of what I wanted to see. First on the list was West Liberty to pick up an orange & blue basket (to match my kitchen) from the Free Trade store, easily one of the coolest stores in the area. I had seen the basket about 2 months ago on an outing with my mom & didn't want to spend the money on it at the time. The more I thought about it, I decided that if I found something that matched the kitchen I should probably just get it. Fortunately, they still had it. The day had started out well.
From here I headed south to a farm market, the location of the first of the barns on my list. I bought a bunch of cheese and veggies and some other goodies, and was delighted to see that while the barn had its roof intact with "Mad River Farm Market" shingled on it, the barn itself was open, its wooden frame without walls. The market folks were very gracious about me wandering around it & taking pictures.
From their lot, I could see the state route running in front of it was packed, as usual, with slow-moving cars. I looked at the crossroad that I sat on, the narrow road stretching out in front of me without a soul on it, and, tho' I wasn't quite sure where it ended up, I decided that was the lesser of the two evils.
I set out on a series of backroads winding through small villages, most of which I had never been to but had heard of. I realized I wasn't missing much. The goal was to take photos of four covered bridges that I had seen on the Gazetteer. I found the first one without any problem, pulled off the road & ran around snapping pictures. The next bridge was just down the road. It was skeletal, the road it sat on was closed, and there was a trailer & a Port-O-John & the smell of fresh tar. I assume they must be planning on restoring it - covered bridges are a nice little tourist draw. But, no one was there to thwart my efforts, so I scrambled around the construction area & took pics. Then, more small towns & backroads & I found myself on a dead-end road with an attractive little bridge on it. There was a Buick LeSabre parked there as well, a sure sign of old folks, and sure enough, there was an elderly man with a small camcorder filming the bridge. We greeted each other and tried to stay out of the other's way while his wife sat in the car. I asked him if he'd taken pics of the other two barns farther north yet. He got sort of a strange look on his face & said, "Uh, yeah." Then he proceeded to tell me that they were from Maryland & that their goal was to take a picture of every covered bridge in the U.S., just because they liked covered bridges. Ohio has 122 (something I did not know) and the one we were at was #98. I thought I was doing pretty good with four in one day!!
After that bridge I tracked down the 4th, a familiar one that I passed every day when I was going to travel school. Then, I set out for more unfamiliar territory, a spiderweb of roads that would eventually lead me to the next series of barns on the other side of the county. While running down these roads, I came across a bonus item - the Bigelow Cemetery Prairie Reserve, a half acre spot of land that is a remnant of the original Ohio prairie. It is also a cemetery, as the name might suggest, one of my other favorite things to photograph & wander thru. The prairie plants were tall, covering the gravestones in a pretty way. Some of the stones dated back as far as 1843 and were in remarkably good condition, except for the broken stones which had been carefully propped against the back fence. I wandered through the mowed paths, took a couple pics of the flowers & a very nice Agriope spider, and went on my way.
I was pleased my journey had taken me this way because otherwise I never would've found the barn that was in that area - I just happened upon it by mistake. This barn was just one of the loop barns & I had to drive back their driveway to get a picture of it. The funny thing was, the barn the quilt square was on was a neat barn that had been turned into a two-car garage, but there was another barn on the property, a huge old thing with paint peeling & a silo. It was by far the more picturesque of the two so I slipped around the side of the quilt barn & snapped a quick photo of the old barn.
From here I was dumped out onto a very familiar route outside of the town of Mechanicsburg.
There were two barns in that area, inc. one of the tour barns which was my official first one
where I had to pay my $10 & pick up my "passport". This barn was magnificent & worth the $10 alone. This was the one with the quilt exhibit - over 100 quilts on display upstairs & down. I was marvelling at the condition of the grand barn, but it turned out the family had it renovated & used it as a reception hall. The roof of the barn was a half-circle & quite impressive with all the bowed planks - from the interior I managed to snap some nice shots of the curved wooden ceiling as well as a few of the more interesting quilts. I'm not much of a quilt person, but I can definitely respect the amount of labor, time & love that must go into one of these creations. Some of them weren't even of a traditional square pattern, but of flowing fields of brightly colored flowers. I showed these photos to Scott who couldn't believe that they were actually quilts. I imagine they cost a pretty penny, too! The barn was whitewashed with a red tin roof & the silo matched. Quite a looker. The house that the barn belonged to was obviously well-maintained with beautiful gardens & stone walkways.
At this barn was my one sad spot of the day, a little old woman in a walker/cart that could only see the quilts in the downstairs area, who had to be content to watch the passersby. I hope someone somehow wheeled her upstairs so she could see all the splendid handcrafted quilts up there, but I have a feeling they left her below while they went up to peruse. I felt terrible about it.
I got the shot of the other barn down the road from this one, just a loop barn & nothing special, and went back thru Mechanicsburg to follow the signs for the rest of the barns, pausing briefly to photograph a rather lovely church.
It was a beautiful day & had gotten rather warm, but I was very pleased with the way things
were going. I couldn't believe the luck I was having at getting good shots, at pulling stupid
traffic maneuvers that I wouldn't normally do & not pissing anyone off, and, especially at the
bridges, the lack of people bothering me or giving me dirty looks for pulling off into the
grass/field/driveway/ditch. Just the occasional yahoo squealing by in their Dodge pickup to
show me that their truck was bigger than mine. No shit.
The rest of the barns were back in relatively familiar territory. The first was the restoration-
themed tour barn, an ornate Victorian building with the usual rectangular barn but also a
dodecagonal barn (a new word, I assure you - means "twelve-sided") attached to it. The whole
affair was painted a muted lavender with a quilt square to match. The folks had obviously
put a lot of money into that barn to restore it & it was worth it. Housed inside the 12-sider
were the non-working stables (not on that day at least), set up in circular fashion with an
opening in the ceiling, I figure where they must've tossed the hay down from up above.
After checking out the next couple of barns, I realized I had forgotten one back in the
direction I'd come earlier, and since I had so many of them thus far, I made up my mind
to seek out the others just to finish the job. One I hadn't planned on going to as I was
there just a few weeks prior to pick raspberries. This is the Rothschild's Berry Farm, a
place that has made a killing on their red raspberries, packaging them in everything from
salsa to hot mustard to coffee. Not to mention their high-end gift shop & tidy little cafe
catering to the area's "elite" aka snooty folks. The cafe does serve up some tasty food tho', and some of their concoctions, inc. a non-raspberry (at least I think it's raspberry-free) jalapeno dip, are fantastic. Another thing I was delighted to find out is that my old friend Rusty works there.
To cut it short, Rusty is the best friend of my first love, longtime ex-boyfriend Steve, and Rusty & I have stayed friends ever since. I saw him walking across the lot as I was snapping the
pic of the quilt square & barked, "Russell!" and he beelined for my truck & yapped at
me for a while, asked if I had a coupon which I was supposed to get with my barn
tour info, and, when I did not have the coupon, he declared that, "The motherfuckers
ripped [me] off. Those motherfucking bastards." I love Rusty.
From there I drove all the way out to the barn I had missed, and when I saw it, I thought,
"I drove all the way out here for this?" since it looked like a lean-to with metal siding.
Upon reading the history of it afterwards, the barn has been standing for over 100 years
and the metal siding was added to protect the original wood. I guess not all old barns
are huge!
By then, I had missed the other three tour barns since they closed at 5 o'clock, but I still drove off to take photos of them. Much to my dismay, I realized the first tour barn, and one of the hardest to photograph from the road (which involved me darting off the busy road into a ditch, probably ticking off a whole batch of drivers), was right across the road from the farm market where I had made my very first barn-stop. I had seen the address & thought the barn was further south on the road, but, that's my fault for not paying attention, I guess. The other tour
barn was actually right down the road from me, and originally Scott had planned to join
me for the last couple barns, but by that time, all I could do was take a picture of it.
I was all barned out anyways!
At the end of it all, I had been gone for 6 1/2 hours, drove 150 miles - most of these in
my county, and fed one stray dog half of my sandwich that I had hurriedly picked up from
Wendy's. Granted, if I hadn't screwed up my route, I could've shaved both mileage and
time from my journey, but I might not have seen all the neat stuff I did. And, it was like
being on a solitary mini-vacation, very nice for me. I think I'll have to make it a point to
do more things by myself. Not that I don't enjoy company, but this time, being able to
do things at my own pace was a grand thing.
After I arrived home, I woke Scott up from his nap &, despite being very excited to check
out my handiwork from the day (not that it takes a lot of skill to photograph square
structures standing still), we set out for the fishing pond where we idled away the evening
by ourselves, drinking beer and watching the sun set. I grew bored with my bait & the lack
of bites on it, and started catching the baby frogs, fresh from the tadpole stage. Scott claims it's one of the things he loves about me. Sick, huh? Knees in the water, filthy with pond mire, small frog tucked carefully into my clenched fist, I found him beaming at me adoringly. What's not to love? They were truly the smallest bullfrogs I've ever seen - small enough to sit on my thumbnail!
A busy but fantastic day. I need more of those!
posted by RCSure | 1:11 PM
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