Barn

 To all of my fellow bloggers:  This month I am participating in the annual A to Z blogger challenge by sharing a few of my childhood memories.  Learn more about the challenge and Sign up right here:
http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-z-challenge-sign-up-list-2016.html , then go out and visit some of these excellent blogs!  Right now my number on the list  is # 1007 for Creation and Compassion and # 1008 for Random Thoughts and Tender Mercies. (The number may change as people drop out)

loading hay into the newly built barn.

Growing up on a dairy farm, the barn was a central part of my life.  This barn was built by my father and my grandfather in the 1930's shortly after Grandpa bought the farm.  Daddy and Grandpa spent many hours each day out in the barn milking, summer and winter, all year around.   

We children had the responsibility of scraping out and hosing down the cement floor of the barn every summer morning after milking time.  With six children to divide up the chores, I didn't actually clean the barn every summer day of my life, but I did take my turn and learned to wield the shovel and the hose and push broom. 

Of course the cleaned up barn was also a fun place to play.  During the middle of the day after the floors were dried and when the barn was empty,  the barn became whatever our imaginations made it to be:  a house, a mansion, a village, a school, an office or another business.   We would drag our props from the house or the playhouse out to the barn.  Of course everything needed to be moved out before milking time!   We even rode tricycles and bicycles in the barn.   

The hayloft was also a very fun place to play, once a child like me could over-come her fear of heights and climb the tall ladder into the loft.  Of course, once up in the loft there was much more imaginative play with siblings and cousins on the stacks of baled hay.   The hardest part was again mastering the fear of heights and getting back on the ladder to climb back down.  I assure you that I was eventually able to do that, as I have not spent my entire life in the hay loft.

myself in front of the now white barn as a baby,