Fireball's Last Load of Glenn McLean's Old Barn
Two weeks later, after Garry Clark and I first leaned a ladder up against Glenn McLean's little old dilapidated barn and started dismantling it board by board and finally pulling all the nails out of the lumber, we loaded "Fireball" up to the gunwales and trucked the last load off to Golden Unicorn Farm. The reason we took so long ripping the old barn apart wasn't because we didn't work hard but because the weather was very uncooperative; we hardly got two good days in a row - either the rain was pounding so hard, we considered building an ark or the snow was blowing with such a vengeance, we could hardly see the road on the way home.
Garry and I left quite a mess behind in our wake; splintered boards, busted bales of hay, broken windows, pieces of tar paper, ripped apart duroids and a kizillion nails of various sizes but it couldn't be helped - there's just no neat way of dismantling a barn that was already precariously leaning towards the ground waiting for a good wind storm to blow it over. Glenn was going to bulldoze the old barn into a heap and then strike a match to it until he heard I could use whatever I could scrounge together to build a smaller barn here at Golden Unicorn Farm. After being a good home to cows, pigs, sheep and uninvited varmints, I like to think that the old barn will be happy to be reborn and once again be a home to a couple of milking goats, fifty chickens and a Great Pyrenees dog.
In this age when a great many folks, because we live in a vast country where still plenty of trees exist, think they will be here forever, only have to look at many of the European countries and see there's no such thing as forests any longer - like Joni Mitchell sang - "They took all the trees And put them in a tree museum And they charged all the people A dollar and a half just to see 'em." - this could happen. So I'm a firm believer in reusing whatever I can, even if it means a lot more work; besides, I've barely got two nickles to rub together and when I hear the words "free, just come and get it", I'm knocking at their door quicker than it takes for Clark Kent to find a phone booth and don a pair of tights and a cape.
Once the barn is totally removed, Glenn is planning to grow a garden in its place. Should make a wonderful garden - 75 years of piss and shit seeping into the earth will definitely help produce a magnificent garden. The only thing I'd be a little worrisome about is that unless he purchases or rents a huge magnet, besides the cucumbers, watermelons, pumpkins and whatever else he plans growing, he could have one hell of a crop of nails.
Glenn's Old Barn Under Tarps - Like A Caterpillar
In A Cocoon Waiting to Become a Butterfly
It's hard to believe that the majority of the old barn fit on a small trailer and a half ton truck but there it sits near the place the new barn is going to be erected. My plans for the new barn keep changing from building a separate barn or attaching it to the existing garage where my studio space is located. After spending a winter here at the base of Green Mountain, almost every weekend bringing another snow storm, I have to think about shoveling snow, hauling grain, hay and straw, packing water, installing electricity, milking goats and collecting eggs. Being almost 70 and aging faster than a speeding skateboard, I also have to contend with slowing down and my strength ebbing as the years go by. No use kidding myself; what I think I can do and what I can actually do are growing further and further apart. Besides the barn's location; its size is another consideration. We'll soon have a huge dog, a couple of goats and quite a few chickens but my wife Sarah is wondering if there will be room for more goats and an alpaca - and what about the unicorn that's been poking around the place recently? If there's a whole family of them in the lower 40 acres, they'll most likely be eying up the barn too - make a good home, especially when they don't have to forage around in the belly-deep snow come next winter. Oh to be young again!
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