Grandpa's Red Barn

This is grandpa's old red barn.  This foto was taken in 1975 ...

before the dam burst and wiped it all away.

I took the foto from just north of the machine shed ... in the north pasture ... just due west of what used to be the grove of trees "B.G." (before grandma - she chopped them down ... because a "modern" farm didn't have groves of trees to supply wood to repair things and for firewood.)

The barn had seen better days ... but served long and faithfully.

The south extension was the milking parlor (with the bin of molasses oats) and a hay loft above it.  The north extension had the calf stalls on the ground level and hay loft above.  On the north side of the building was sometimes a pig pen and beyond that the main haystack.  There was a west wall on the barn to block wind for the cattle huddling inside during the winter.  The two beams extending outward from the peak have a metal rail on the underside to drop a hay rake down to pick up a load of hay then transport it inside and store it in the lofts.  There were always pigeons nesting in the upper reaches and walking along that ledge of the upper openings

 ...  a bit out of the effective range of BB-guns.

Here you see the corral on the east side of the barn.  Past the milking parlor door was another corral on the south & west sides.  After the winter we'd clean out the floor of the barn and the corrals, of the built-up manure ... put it in the manure spreader wagon, and spread it on the fields to fertilize them.  I slipped and a loaded wagon ran over my legs one time in the barn ... fortunately there was still a lot of manure cushion so nothing happened to me.  But accidents can happen on the farm.