Barn cleaning

I’ve mentioned our friends Lance and Tammy before; they are farmer buddies of ours, and they run a full-time dairy as well as raising pastured beef and lamb. They keep some of their cattle on acreage they own across the street from us, and have leant their tractor to us a few times and been generally pretty helpful.

Lance’s grandmother passed away last year, and after months of negotiations, he and Tammy were able to buy the old family house. It’s right across the street from us, adjacent to the pastureland they already owned. This is great news for us: it means we’ll be seeing even more of them.

One of the fun things about farmers is that they help each other out.  Last weekend, L & T hosted a barn-garage-and-house-cleaning party. I was glad to be invited; not just for the chance to socialize, but to also repay a little of the debt we owe them for all their help. And eating some Jello mold, fudge, and casserole at lunch was kindof nice too.

It was a gala affair, with lots of friends showing up to haul old things out of the various outbuildings. We sorted stuff into piles: scrap metal, glass recycling, burnables, and trash for the dump. By the time we were done, the scrap metal pile was 20 feet across and almost as tall as I am! Like Lance said, “it looks like the barn vomited everything out into the yard.”  I had a good time. Besides the fact that I love manual labor, the weather was GREAT, and the event was an exercise in cultural archaeology. I saw all sorts of antique things that haven’t been used for half a century: a scythe, a 60″ chainsaw bar, an old outboard motor, a rotary linen press, and scads of old dairy implements that had no use that was apparent to me. There were some half-finished projects, things cobbled together with bailing wire… it made me think a lot about what happens when someone dies. What would it be like, if the dead could see all these people milling around, laughing and loving in the warm sunshine, sorting through their belongings. Gawking at some things, marveling at others, laughing at some, and just staring confusedly at yet others. It was like unraveling someone’s hidden lifetime but never getting the whole story, just clips and glimpses.