There is an old barn out on a property I trap, i decided to pay some homage to it.Let me know your thoughts.

The Old Barn

The old barn stood in the field, surrounded like an old General by his troops of wild rose thickets, blackberry vines, and green-briar tangles. It’s a little off plumb, weathered as an old saddle—gray and cracked. A new piece of tin flaps in the wind like an open wound. The last storm tore a few more boards off, leaving it looking like an eight-year-old’s crooked smile.

Its only inhabitants now are mice, rats, and a few coons in the hayloft. But the barn remembers. It remembers milk cows and chickens, and the long line of farmers who parked their tractors inside year after year. They're gone, but the barn remains. And it remembers.

It’s seen scorching summers where the roof got hot enough to cook an egg, and blizzards so fierce even the mighty barn shook from the wind. It's one of my favorite places to stop when I hunt or trap this field. I’ll pull up the old creaking milking stool, lean against the corrugated barn-wood, and just listen—to the wind through the boards like an old conversation I can’t quite make out, to the skittering of mice and rats in the walls, and maybe the banshee screech of a barn owl up in the rafters.

Once, while hunting with my daughter, I noticed something strange on the floor—what looked like an ancient mosaic scattered through the dirt. Tiny, gleaming white fragments caught the light. It took me a moment to realize what it was: the remains of untold generations of owl pellets, dropped and broken down by time until only the bones remained. That mosaic was a testament to the owl’s efficiency—and to the multitudes of rodents that unknowingly contributed to a masterpiece shaped by instinct, hunger, and dust.

I like to sit and wonder what the old place has seen, the men, women, and children who worked and played there. The storms, twisters, and blizzards it has weathered and survived. Who walked here before me, and what fragments of them still echo across its floors and in the rafters.

I like that !

Some of my memories are the smells as well. The mixture of the smell of coons stretched on the corn crib wall and the smell of the ear corn on the inside of the crib. And oh yeah, the memory of the rats running when I would shine a light in the crib in order to get a few ears for the sows.

My particular barn is past but if I listen carefully I can still hear those walls I nailed coons on still talking.

That's the idea I want you to BE there with me,to see,hear, smell, and feel the things I do.

Still a stud,,, living the dream.
Hope all is well……

You have some writing skills.

Nice job , I liked it.

I have a barn simular to what you wrote. Been in my family almost a hundred years. It has had repairs done and still in use. I probably have as many memories in that barn as I do in the family house. Thank you.

Well done, Mike. That was an excellent way of painting a picture with words.

Good stuff Mike!

Very nice, if only she could talk.

Thanks for all your kind words boys, and Vinke I really appreciate your kid words

That was very good, but just gotta ask - What is corrugated barn wood?....Did you mean corrugated barn tin maybe?

Corrugated in this sense means wrinkled and rough textured

Gotcha, thanks...Hope you keep up the writing, you can really paint a picture in the minds eye, you definitely have a knack for it.

OH i have writ a thing or two........ LOL

I was born and raised on a farm And some of my siblings married farmers and their childern are now farmers I have spent my ilfe helping out from time to time with various chores that are being competed So I have been in many barns And it still impresses me how well constructed they are And even more so when you consider the tools and the methods they had to use to build them t And those that have been kept in good repair are still more than just useful to the farmer using them to store hay livestock and farm equipment I find it cool that the different people from different areas of the world built the barns to suit their way of living So it was normal l for the settlers to build a barn for the livestock before they put up a house for them selves Their animals where their primary way of surviving So rhe animals needed to be kept sheltered And the people lived in the barn And I guess that is where the expression Where you born in the barn comes from Mike you couple of paragrahs say it much better than I iLIKE YOU STYLE OF PUTTING WORDS TOGETHER TO MAKE YOUR POINT!!