First Time in a Barn - Episode 59

Susanne is looking for a dreamer with a destiny.  Join her on her first trip inside a rare octagonal barn to find out who will be loving this magnificent structure next.  She's also going to be asking you for a big favour ... 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Happy to Be Canadian Podcast. I'm Suzanne Spence Wilkins, a writer who lives in rural southwestern Ontario, Canada. Each week I share an original, very short story that will have you laughing and reflecting on the simple moments of our lives. Now, on to today's episode. Happy to be Canadian, Episode 59. First time in a barn. This week a mother and her two daughters stopped into the Crazy Ape Barn. They had visited when we were open as a gift shop and cafe. Most years they went to the nearby zoo and included us in their travels. They had just made an impromptu visit to Greenview Avery's and stopped in to see if we were still open as before. The mom came in first and we welcomed her. We had just finished painting a wall and reinstalling the electrical plate covers when she appeared. She stepped into the barn for a chat, and the daughters soon followed. They were about eighteen years old, or thirty, I can't tell anymore. We offered them the use of the washing facilities and a chance to wander through the building now unencumbered with the previous retail brickabrac. As the young ladies came down the stairs, one said, I would love to live here. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that statement over the past decade and a half. If I had $100 for every time I had heard it, I wouldn't be selling the barn. I could just give it away to some lucky person. But that's not how things work, is it? You have to have the dream, the money and equity, and perseverance to back it up. That's a combination that's a little bit rarer. I understand the overwhelming love for this octagon barn. I've felt it for about 60 years. As a child, the recently built Highway 41 provided us with new views into the backyards of farmsteads across southwestern Ontario. While driving and trying to keep us kids occupied, my parents pointed out a rare octagon building that could only be seen from the four-lane highway. It became a way marker for me every time we drove to London or other points east of home. Spying it on our returning westward travels meant that there was only one more ramp until our exit. As time goes, it was a half a century later when we disassembled the barn and rebuilt it in Palmyra. When those creative folks tell me that they would love to live here, I know the feeling. I had it the first time I walked into this historic building, albeit conditions were different. Today, the dreamers, artists, and unique individuals see the possibility in the rare reconstructed building. I'm sure it looks different in all of their dreams. Just like the original barn was in opposite condition to our repurposed structure today. I remember the first time I walked inside the old barn's eight walls, the beauty of the beams, the history of the farm stashed into every crevice. There was a mandor that entered at ground level. Beside it, a discarded convex glass television screen had been inserted into the wall as a window. The manger was much as it had been when the last sheep and cattle left. There was a sweet remnant aroma of cows. A hint of whitewash clung to the short stubby beams that supported two massive horizontal beams that held up the ceiling. To be honest, the manger wasn't impressive. It was squat. Spider webs hung from the punky bark of the sleeper beams supporting the unfinished boards that served as both ceiling for the manger and floor for the loft. Almost none of this part of the building could be saved. In the center of the old manger, there was a chute that led to the second floor. Foot long strips of scrap lumber had been nailed like a ladder on a beam for farmers to climb into the mouth. They would throw hay down that same chute to the animals below. When I climbed up that century old makeshift ladder and poked my head above the floorboards, it was like entering another world. For the first time I saw the beauty of the barn, the strong timber frame that had withstood battering winds, heat and cold. Its post and beam structure was similar to many rectangular barns that I had been in, but different. There was a thrashing bay in the middle and piles of straw still heaped in parallel miles. But instead of corners, there were angled walls, nowhere for the devil to catch you, as the saying goes. At the eaves, the eight walls matched up with the eight triangular roof sections. At their apex was an eight-sided patch that looked like a crokinole board. The original Coca-Cola had blown off in a snowstorm in 1978. When I walked into the dilapidated barn in 2003, I could only see possibilities. I looked past the junk and the piles of unused straw. One wall and roof section was held together with two by sixes. I saw a barn that I had loved and didn't want to disappear. At that moment, I knew that this barn was meant to be part of my journey. The lady that owned the barn back then had had numerous inquiries to remove the barn, and some had been close to closure. After my barn tour, I told her I would call her before 4 p.m. to tell her whether I would save the barn or not. I called her at 2 30. I said when I woke up that morning I had no intention of owning this barn. I also told her I thought it was supposed to be with me. She said she thought so too. So as we are entering a new chapter of our lives, we are looking for a person who will love this barn as much as we do. It is a tall order. It was challenging for the last owner to find someone who would become a custodian of this treasure. And then I appeared. Now we're looking for the next lover of this barn. With this in mind, our local real estate representative, Stacey Ziegers, has teamed up with Old Home Lover Extraordinaire Paulette Sapace of at Old Home Charming and Heritage Realty Group to find the next caretaker of this eight-sided barn. I know who it will be. It will be a dreamer. A person with a creative mind who can fit a square peg into an octagonal hole. A lover of rural life. A person who looks at a hand human beam and sees the past and the future. A creative with an entrepreneurial spirit who may want to take their side hustle to the world. Or they could be a flower farmer who wants to maximize the potential of the lush established perennial gardens. They may want to host weddings or retreats or intimate workshops. They may want to bake and sell tens of thousands of butter tarts. It has been done here. They may want to relax on the second story deck and peek over the farmer's field to Lake Erie and do nothing else. They may not even know that this barn is in their destiny yet. So I want you to help me find that special person for this rare beauty of a barn. We've done all the hard work. They just need to provide the dream. So I ask that you share this podcast with the most creative, adventurous person you know. When the one perfect person sees the barn, they will realize that it is supposed to be part of their journey. And we will both thank you. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Happy2Be Canadian. If you would like to receive an email each Saturday morning that features new short stories and more, you can sign up on my website, www.crazy8barn.com. If you would like to meet me in person and discover another way that we tell our rural stories, please join me at a Barn Quilt Painting Workshop at our beautiful eight-sided barn in Palmyra, Ontario, along the North Shore of Lake Erie. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Crazy8 Barn. If you are an Apple Podcast listener and enjoyed this podcast, I would appreciate it if you could leave me a favorable review. And that lets Apple know that Happy to Be Canadian is a valuable podcast and it shares it with other potential listeners. I'm Suzanne Spence Wilkins, and I'm Happy to Be Canadian.