Bet You Thought
Something Happened To Me
It did, I grew a couple
of days older but don’t know about wiser, and of course I took a few days off
from writing. I needed it but it doesn’t
make much difference as you would think I would come back full of ideas about where
to take you the reader next. I am looking at 18500 hits on my blog here soon
and will be within striking distance of my goal to have 20000 hits, with the
last 10000 coming even faster than the first 10000. All thanks to you the readers.
Another goal of writing
a years’ worth of blogs will also soon be achieved, currently I believe I have
327 blogs and need 365 to say that I have wrote for one full year . one of my
goals when I started this blog. If you can remember I figured I would write for
1 year then I knew I was capable of writing a novel. Well sometimes I find it
harder to write daily than write a novel. I have wrote a novel and I did it on
here and anyhow after nearly two years
of writing I hope to achieve by my
birthday in a little over a month, one of my first goals with blogging. . This will
require me to blog daily from here on to my birthday to meet this goal. Haven’t
really sat down and figured if I have enough time but will see where I am at
and figure it out shortly. If not I will give it one heck of a try.
Again all this
is attributed to you the reader of my blog. If no one would have ever read what
I wrote and I admit some days were pretty lame, much the same as todays might
appear to you. But if no one would have ever paid attention then I would have
never made it this far, having gave up long ago. I watch the response I get by
how many hits I get for a particular post I write, and some have been much
better than others. I had a good following when I was writing my novel online
and that was fun and a challenge to daily get up and create the equivalent of 4
pages of manuscript. Something I had
never done before and in the time span of 2 months I was able to write a 450
typed page manuscript. It wasn’t that great but it was an experience I am going
to take up again here soon for another try. But not until after my birthday and
after I accomplish a couple of the aforementioned goals, will I get around to
starting a new novel. Again it will be online and it will be on my blog. Leann and
Guy may be in for another environmental awareness adventure.
Next up is a
disturbing trend I have seen around here lately as many of our timber frame
barns are being tore down to make flooring for high end homes. They are looking
for the last traces of virgin timber our area has to offer. It just happens to
be in our barns.
the same buzzard barn on Moffit a couple of days ago
Let me say this
is if a barn is falling down then I say more power to them, if they want to
salvage the hardwood material out of it as compared to just letting it rot to
the ground. Then go ahead it is acceptable to me. We had a barn that they bought to reclaim and
it was to the point it was a safety hazard, and needed to be brought down or
set afire before someone was hurt by it. I would have rather seen this than let
it go to nothing. At least there was some good come by it.
But lately it
seems as if the barns are still in good shape and with roofs on them that would
sustain them for quite a while , and yet they are falling victim to the
reclaimer’s as hardwood flooring must be taking an upswing and prices paid for
the barns must be better than before. Three barns on Moffit Drive outside of Waynesburg
on one road within a mile of each other are no longer there. Each barn looked
as though they had limited if any damage to them that would require their
demolition. Yet they are gone forever. Not
even to be replaced and it would be near impossible to replace these structures.
Cost alone is prohibitive when it comes to replacing barns of this caliber. Post
and tenon timber framing is a thing of the past. It requires intensive labor
and is cost prohibitive when it is much cheaper and easier to go with the
standard pole barn of today.
I am sure the
owners of these barns would like to have the right to do with their property as
they see fit. And understandably so I think they should, as I would want the same.
But still this is a blight on our countryside, a growing cancer so to speak,
that will undoubtedly grow more as the economy improves. More good barns will
son fall to the wrecker’s hands and we will undoubtedly lose forever a piece of
our areas legacy.
We can’t save
everything and one thing for sure is change, it happens daily. Not sure what
can be done or what should be done but an understanding and an admission we
have a problem here is the first thing to do and discuss what can be done to
correct it. If nothing else, and you are
the owner of one of these barns, allow someone to come and document in pictures
the structure and its location , so that future generations will appreciate any
existing structure that may be around in their times . Do this before you sell
the barn to the reclaimer. There are some barn restoration groups that exist in
Ohio and may take an interest in your barn. If nothing else they may be able to
give you an idea of what your barn is actually worth in terms of a historical
or replacement value.
Some of my best
childhood memories happened in the barn. The time grandpa and I laid back on
the hay as the rain pounded on the tin roof of the barn as he talked about the
old days and building those barns. His voice trailing off as he would soon get groggy
and was soon snoring away. Of course all farmers know what to do when it rains,
and that is let it rain. It’s going to anyhow.
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