NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/668245
60 NEBRASKAland • MAY 2016 The Old and Forgotten Peeling and Rusting Photos and story by Jon Farrar S ome years back I spent most of a day with a rancher in the middle of Cherry County, probably as far away from any town as is possible in Nebraska. We walked fencelines and talked about hedge posts – crooked and skinny line posts, five- and six-inch corner and gate posts, and how long they last before rotting – and then we went to the kitchen, a kitchen as well- kept as the ranchstead, for coffee and cookies. The conversation drifted. The rancher said he could not understand why magazines, including NEBRASKAland, published photographs of dilapidated barns and rundown ranchsteads rather than well- kept farm and ranch buildings. I knew the answer, my answer – a photograph of a barn with a door hanging on one hinge and most of the paint peeled off is visually more interesting to the eye than a sheet-metal pole barn. Old barns and other old buildings are awash with patterns and compositions. But I didn't say what I thought was the answer to his question. Metal machine sheds replace barns because they are cheaper and easier to maintain and few, if any, farmers need a hay mow any more. Today, farms run on diesel fuel, not the labor of horses. Few farms have milk cows. The days of a patch of this crop here and patch of that crop there are gone. There are horizon-to-horizon fields of corn and soybeans. Gone are cob and coal sheds, cotton cake sheds and hen-houses. Some farmers and ranchers keep their old barns out of nostalgia, or respect for their parents or grandparents who were proud of their barns. Perhaps some remember stories their grandparents told of wedding dances in swept-clean hay mows that went on until the sun was rising, and of children wrestling in the so-soft prairie hay left in the corners until they fell asleep. A few old barns and houses are lovingly restored at a cost in the thousands of dollars. But most old barns are long gone or rotting, sagging, leaning, waiting for a wind to push them over – even propped up by long two-by- fours. There are broken windows. Pigeons have moved in. Maybe there is a barn owl nest in a corner of the mow. The galvanized-tin cupola on the roof's ridgeline with a crowing rooster weathervane is askew. Or there is no crowing