Family Farm Friday #81: The Barn That Built Me

"If I could just come in, I swear I'll leave.  Won't take nothing but a memory, from the house that built me."  ~Miranda Lambert

I recently came across this old picture of our show barn.  I don't know why it was taken.  It's just an old rock barn, with red corrals, against a perfect blue sky.  And the simple picture made me realize that the old barn did so much more than house our animals.  It built me.

If you added up all of the hours of my childhood, I think you'd be hard pressed to say that the majority of them were not spent in this barn.  Showing lambs, measuring out feed, blowing steers, walking pigs.   And I'll guarantee you that my family has done more talking and bonding under this old tin roof than we have anywhere else.

That old barn has stories to tell.  Of screaming fights and broken toes and curry combs being thrown across the feed room.  Of asprins being counted and weighing on Sundays and showboxes being packed.  It knows of lucky cans of revive and blue halters and bags of feed from four different states.  Of lectures from Mr. Franklin, panicked phone calls to Wade, and stressful nights of analysis.

In that barn we learned to show and to feed and to care for animals.  We learned what water belly looked like, which guards you use to clip a pig, and that finewool lambs can drink from a prune juice can.  We learned that the countless nights all year in an old barn was what produced purple banners one night a year in August.

But more than that, we learned to be good people.  We learned responsibility and work ethic and sacrifice.  We learned the importance of family.  That barn--those days--built me.