Thank you for visiting today. Sunday is always a very quiet day in my blog world.
What is your best day? I always get the most readers on Monday morning at 7am my time.
Most readers are from the United States.
Below is Pania in flight. The flying focus. Somehow being OUT of focus makes it look more real – more dramatic.
Sheila took herself for a walk yesterday. Note that Tima is hidden from sight when the big Sheila Steamship comes out of its berth to have a cruise around.
This time of year Sheila needs the exercise so I let her go wherever she wants to, though she never leaves her cows for long.
Plus she knows I have been gathering the eggs and she wants one. And she always receives her egg at her gate. She is a very well behaved pig is our Sheila with a very good memory. Once Sheila’s gate was shut again out popped Tima.
No wind again yesterday. When there is no wind I get twice as much done.
Old barns. This old barn has had such a hard life. The barns around here were not built to be pretty, they are simple useful structures and the timber was, of course, cheap and untreated so the wind gives this building a hard time too. We do a lot of patching and propping but much of the timber in this barn is rotten. It is like a painting hanging on a wall by a pin. It can hang there for years as long as no-one tries to dust behind it, then the painting and the pin will never be the same again. I have the same feeling about this old barn.
I hope you have a good day.
love celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
60 responses to “A Flying Focus”
We had an old barn. But with more holes.
It is hard work keeping up to date on the maintenance but I have a feeling if I take my eye off the ball the whole thing will start to tumble down – so far we are on top of it.. c
I think there’s something nice about the way time the weather changes the texture of big old wooden barns. I love the way the paint has been stripped from the old wood. It’s more picturesque than practical 🙂
Yes I like it too – to paint this old barn would be just too expensive anyway and they both need doing. Lucky we like the decaying look! c
IF!!! IF you decide to tear it down, save the wood. People are paying huge amounts for old barn wood. A lady my daughter knows paid $4,000 for a barn door to varnish and hang between her kitchen and pantry.
Linda
I will never tear it down – with care it will outlive my farming ventures – I would never tear any barn down
I don’t blame you! Nothing like a wonderful old barn.
It always makes me sad to see the old wood barns tumbling down only to be replaced by unattractive ‘tin cans’. Fortunately yours still houses animals, that goes a long way to keeping the barn ‘alive’.
Sundays are a quiet day on my blog too. I tend to get most visitors during the week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays).
Hmm – midweek – interesting.. c
Before there were the ‘Where’s Waldo?’ books there were these picture books that used common items (like marbles, and matchboxes and bobby pins) to create beautiful pictures. I used to love pouring through those. Enjoying every discovery of something my brain said was a … that was made to look like a …. I find soaking in your pictures is like that too. For instance – noticing the cement blocks between the two bales of hay in the first picture. And the pallette leaning against the little coop. Or the blue barrel – suspended on a post perhaps? – in the last picture. AND the fire hydrant in behind the Purina bucket! I look like this because this is how we most often do our patch ups here at home. If something needs fixing we wander into our shed or our basement and look around at everything that is ‘saved/stored/stacked’ for something useful to solve our problem. Your pictures are treasure troves!
The concrete blocks are funny! I put a bale there to stop the wind blowing in the doors, as i walked back past the bale was moving, so i put the concrete blocks on top of the bale and then another bale on top. Who knows what will join that tower next! c
It’s a concrete sandwich! 😉
I rarely pay attention to my blog traffic – I used to, in the beginning. Kind of like the old barn here. When we first moved here I was all about keeping things tidy and clean, painted and patched. But, as the years move on, I find myself paying less attention to anything other than maintenance to keep the animals comfortable. The old barn on this place is beyond repair. Like your barn, the wood is rotten and I’m afraid to look and see what actually might be holding the whole thing together! The foundation has heaved and the walls are leaning inward. One day the whole thing will cave in at the center.
I love your description of Sheila’s movement and Tima’s respect. There is such a pecking order in all of life.
I love to watch the people coming in and out. It is not a competition thing more of a pleasure. I do enjoy knowing people are reading.
Good afternoon, c. The weather is playing with my bones today. I rather feel like that barn.
You must be damp! c
Grey, misty damp, cold, 2C.
I am amazed by your lack of snow. If I had to guess by looking at your pictures- I’d say it was very early spring. Well. I guess it IS early spring. VERY early spring. 🙂
We don’t really get a lot of snow as a rule – usually it just gets too cold and this year of course it is so warm that we are getting rain. I wish it were spring! But I guess we have a lot of winter to go yet..
Sun, no wind or snow … long may it last for you. Laura
No sun yet, no sun for days and days really – nor today – but the no wind is just wonderful… c
[D] I love the painting-and-pin analogy – so true! Our busiest day for readers is generally Sunday. Most viewers are from the UK, though they tend to come via our excerpt-links on facebook. Direct WordPress followers tend to be from the N America – a rapidly growing cohort. [J] Timber cladding is, generally relatively easy to replace. The key is keeping the structure sound. Agricultural buildings should look purposeful, their appearance should say something about what they’re used for, even if they simply fall into the ‘big shed used for anything and everything’. Yours has a very high ridge, and that’s less usual these days, as steel portal frames will take snow loading on relatively flat roofs.
We have put back many of the supports that were ripped out to put in those HUGE doors and a big machine in the 60s/70s. They tore out the mezzanine and the staircase (Johns grandfather) – which was criminal in my opinion. But in those days the huge harvesters were coming into vogue and barns became sheds to store equipment rather than cows and sheep and pigs. (shakes head) , Still it is leaning and shifts back and forth with the weather – but it only has one leak! which I need to get onto this summer.. c
My stats don’t seem to reveal a pattern in terms of the most popular day of the week. It seems to be better linked to my choice of topic. But just love your photography and that picture of the old barn shows a barn that one sees fairly often here in Southern Oregon.
I have noticed that areas seem to have evolved barn types – probably due to geography and climate and the animals and probably finances too of course. Interesting that you have similar ones there in Oregon yet the climate is very different.
Great photos. Barns are amazing things. We have no barn, just a group of livestock greenhouses whose coverings are slowly falling into disrepair. I can’t afford to replace the tarps on them from the original company (over $1,000), so we keep coming up with other alternatives. Not very perfect and it takes a lot of time to keep things covered, but that’s the way it is. Not pretty and neat as it was when we started! But that’s ok, I really don’t mind, and the goats don’t seem to mind either. When I started my blog I tried to avoid taking photos of the stuff that is hanging around, ripped tarps, muddy/poopy ground, but that’s not what farms really look like, or at least most do not look like Farm Beautiful, so I don’t really edit them anymore.
Sheila and Tima are too much!
There are areas here that are a shambles but like you say this is how farms are sometimes. We just don’t have the time to organise everything and get everything in its proper place. How do you patch up the plastic houses? Is there a special kind of tape?
I think you might get more traffic on a Monday because the Fellowship has missed you on your Sunday (ahem) rest. I find Sundays are often a quiet day; if you write much about the sort of things I do (quilting, embroidery, gardening, cooking…), a lot of your followers are ladies, and many of them have traditional religious beliefs and activities that keep them away from electronic media on a Sunday. That barn is beautiful, held together by hope, rust and cobwebs. It probably only survives because it flexes when the wind blows! Glad to see both my favourite Farmy Ladies out for a little exercise 🙂
There are definitely a lot of cobwebs in there – i need to get onto that! c
Well, I’m here each day; it’s the first thing I do after firing up this beast, is to click on the email telling me you have posted. The odd days you don’t post are days that seem to have something important missing from them. There are two other blogs I subscribe to and don’t always see them each day (most days, usually) but yours I have never missed a day since I first subscribed Just love your description of the old Sheila Steamship leaving berth today. And also about the barn, the foundation must be good and solid or it wouldn’t still be standing. I’m wondering if you could just replace a board every now and then as it rots… that way replacing the entire barn boarding over a long period of time to be continually updating. Or is that just not feasible? Hope you have a good day too and the wind holds off. ~ Mame 🙂
That is exactly what we do – I call it patching – The North side is quite the quilt of patches.. c
I’m like you on this. Well said! Special person, our C. Kind of a sacred place, too. In many ways. (I believe even God is amused, and pleased, with creations like Steamship Sheila, Terrible Tima, and Ton Terrific.)
Monday is my best day for readers, too. Noon is the magic hour for me.Interesting!
My husband grew up farming. I took pictures of his grandparents’ old barns when we were dating and then hand-developed and toned them with sepia. The family was charmed and let me marry in. Barns are beautiful and have such stories to tell!
I’m a farm girl too ~ a dairy and grain farm girl and I love barns ~ all of them!! The each have their own history and character!! I would love to see your wedding pictures!! Carol
Old barns love sepia – c
The visits to my blog vary, although I’m not even close to being as consistent a blogger as you are. I will blog about anything from my family, to travel, to interests . . . just about anything that pops in my head. Not always interesting reading for everyone 🙂
I love barns, especially old barns with their character and history. Old houses are the same for me, but interestingly enough, I’ve only owned one old house in my life. There was so much more work involved that hubby and I strayed away from old homes after that. Still, the character, charm and history in an old house can’t be beat.
Yes – we all have a deep love of the old – kind of built into our psyche somehow.. I guess it is a preservation thing c