We celebrate barns!

A little mud doesn't stop us - the Barn Celebration carried on in rain, mud, and finally a great day of sunshine!

Inspiring speakers, great food and music, demonstrations of timber joinery, blacksmithing, weaving ... a good time for all of us at the Bushnell Farm in Old Saybrook. Thanks especially to our hosts Sherry and Herb Clark, and all the friends of barns and timber framing who gathered to make it a special time.

See videos of our speakers here: http://www.youtube.com/user/CTBarns/videos

Try out our new Barns Trail - get paper map and the iPhone App!
In the App Store, search for CT Barns

Celebrate Barns - June 7-8

We are making final preparations for our two-day celebration starting with a gala evening and ending with a Hoedown. Bushnell Farm is at 1445 Boston Post Road in Old Saybrook - information here to register.

In between - an array of sessions and demonstrations of everything about barns - 

and we'll be introducing the new 

Connecticut Barns Trail

 with a beautiful printed map and a fun iPhone App!

Our first barns are on the State Register!

This morning the Historic Preservation Council of the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO - what we call the "shippo") voted to accept our first group of 20 barns to the State Register!

Our barn team at Historic Barns has been working on writing these for a year and a half, so it's a thrill to know that the goal is being reached.

Here is one of the most fun barns, in Monroe - the signage was originally visible from Main Street (Route 25) though now it's obscured by commercial buildings. So it's the private billboard of its owner who has personally gotten the signage restored when repainting the barn.

Congratulations to all the new State Register-listed properties!

Barns and CSAs

Several of our favorite historic barns are home to working farms that are run as CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) - what a great way to live sustainably by eating local food AND conserving great old local buildings!

Here's Wild Carrot CSA at the 1870 Bristol Barn next to the Farmington River in Canton.

A couple of others are the Massaro Farm in Woodbridge and the Woodbridge Farm in Salem - those Woodbridges did get around!

Also Rosedale Farm in Simsbury where there is a walking trail in addition to tobacco barns, wine, and veggies.

Signs of Spring!

It was great to be outside yesterday, visiting a historic dairy farm, now enjoying new life as Crossen Arabians - here's this year's new foal, 3 weeks old. That was the most obvious sign that a new season is arriving any day now.

More to celebrate today:

  International Womens Day 

and

  National Agriculture Day 

Winter Reflections

from Jonathan Papers by Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris, 1912 One hundred years later, the barns that were groomed and spiffed up in Elisabeth's time, have returned to the "unkempt" condition that she loved.  Though, if not groomed a bit, they're apt to collapse entirely!

THE COVERED BRIDGE

The covered bridge of solid beam

Above the slow, meandering stream –

The misty lake below the hill,

The mountain forest, cool and still,

Where birch and oak with spruce and pine

In cheerful harmony combine –

The countryside, so good to see,

And, most of all, so good to be –

All this, though elements may rage,

Stays part of all our heritage.

In healing sun and windy rain,

The touch of earth brings strength again:

And if a while it lies behind,

It still supports our strength of mind.

Catharine Jackson Alger

CHRISTMAS 1941

Note from Barn Hunter Charlotte: 
This poem was written by my grandmother in the days after the Pearl Harbor attack.