TOM BUCKLAND TAKES A LAST LOOK AT HIS BARN
alan skeoch
Oc.t 23, 2018
I wish we could stop and take a breath. The pace of change is just too fast for me…and for lots of others. Fortunately I had
that chance to pause the other day when I caught Tom Buckland, alone on his seventh line farm which was about to be turned
over to a new owner. And that new owner may not know what to do with the huge Buckland barn because it needs some rescue
work on the stone foundation. If other barns are any guide i expect the Buckland barnwill soon be gone…a pile of splintered beams
and twisted roofing. Not glorious any more.
“Tom can we take a look at your barn from the threshing floor?”
“Closed it up for the farm sale…worried someone would get hurt…”
“Two of us are unlikely to have trouble…”
“Sure we can take a look.”
What was left unsaid? You figure that out below.
“Alan, when we were kids this barn was our playroom…”
“Huge place…biggest barn I have ever seen, what did you do in here when you were young?”
“See that ladder over there…the one that runs right the barn frame?”
“That one with short boards nailed to it??”Yep…when we were young, my brothers would climb that ladder
and then swing across the top of the barn hand over hand…a challenge.”
“You could kill yourself doing that.:
“Kids never think of that.”
“Anybody fall?”
“Probably but there was always a hay mow below…soft landing.”
“You mean way up there and then hand over hand along the hay track?”
“Yep…did it…younger then.”
(look at picture far right)
“Most of the big beams in here are beech…the trees must have been immense way back then.”
“Powder post beetles in the beams now.”
“No problem…it would take them a couple of hundred years to bring down the barn.”
