Filed under: July 2012
The old hen-house has been razed…she’s gone.
July 9, 2012
The little old chicken house has been demolished. The real estate that she leaves behind will be used for … what else.. more buildings 😮
She came down easily. The old boards splintered as the floor fell right out of the bottom. The siding held the walls up, but only for a minute. It was with mixed emotion that I turned the old building into a pile of rubble.
The building started out as a corn crib back before the depression of the 1930’s. She was abandoned in the 1960’s. My buddy saved it in the 1980’s and made a clubhouse out of it for his kids. I salvaged it once again in the 1990’s.
We first used it as a clubhouse too for our young ones. The wasps liked it too… making play days tough now and then. I later ripped the bunks out of it and used it for small piglets. The wooden floor didn’t work too well for that. It held the nasty manure smell for weeks.
I used it for chickens for a short time, but soon needed a corn crib. I turned the little building back into a corn crib and used it that way until the year 2000. In 2001 we moved it here, added some recycled windows, new siding and a new roof. It became our chicken house.
The floor started to sag, probably from the old days as a pig pen or perhaps, just old age. I decided it was time to move on, so the new chicken house was built. Today, the old building that had so much history, gave up its life.
I could almost hear the corn hitting the floor, the children laughing and playing and maybe even a oink now and then, as the old gal crumbled. She made my children feel safe. She kept my animals dry and warm and my corn from spoiling. She adorned my little farm like a small jewel. I will miss her … as silly as it sounds.
Things, animals and people come and go in our lives. We can stay hard-hearted and just take it in stride, I guess, but, I prefer to let things into my heart. Even an old building touches me somewhere deep, like my grandpa’s old barn that is long gone. It lives in me forever.
Animals and of course people, touch us too. The fact that an inanimate object can stir an old guy’s soul makes me scratch my head… but just like my grandpa Rice’s sugarhouse, I can see them clearly. A multitude of memories gushes from within me, when I remember it. Good memories, fond memories triggered by a building and instilled by loved ones, these memories define me.
My old chicken house is gone. The memories made while she was in service, will live as long as I do. When I pause to think of her, I will be reminded of little boys and piglets, old hens and corn and the love that surrounded all of them…. She is gone … but not forgotten.
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