The Hay loft section of the cow barn stood about as high as a three story building and it dominated the area around it. From the house it was a short walk to the door where the cows stayed. In 1966, two trees stood in front of the cow barn. The one on the right would suffer our tree house. The one on the left would die from the loss of a limb and termites in the late 80’s. At one time the land in front of the barn was terraced and planted with flowers. Where the cow barn and the Hay barn met in the cow barn section was a door to the Barn. To the left down a little ways further in the cow section was the doorway to the hay area. At that doorway water would always drip freely when it rained so I guess it should have been no surprise that it would fall before the beginning of the 1980’s.
The hay section of the barn was spacious, it must have been set up to accommodate at the time of its building a horse drawn trailer loaded with hay. There was a section walled off with a metal triangle dish with holes in it to feed cow that were about to give birth or had just.There was a space above the little enclosure in the barn that you could climb up to and look down from. And then there was the section where the hay was stored. It was open and went to the bare ground. The first time I saw the inside of the barn there was a rope hanging from the pulley in the center of the ceiling that Billy Vines, the oldest son of the owner Bill Vines would swing from.
The cow section was the direct opposite from the Hay section. The ceiling was low and the interior was covered in peeling whitewash. It had two rows of stalls with the manure collector running down the center and ending outside the barn so it could be dumped into a waiting manure spreader.
One time we went up to the farm and the rail out the barn had been bent down so the manure collector could not go out the barn. The rumor was Karl bent it down so no one would get dumped out and hurt.
The barn roof was covered with four by eight foot sheets of corrugated metal attached by metal nails. We one year used the back roof as a slide catching our pants on the nails and ripping them. Why mom didn't get angry I don't know, she just stopped us changing into other clothes when the pants became shreaded and exposed more then you felt comfortable showing.
The other story connected with the barn was one year we went up there and the roof to the cow barn, that consisted of metal sheets and some wood was gone. The man who owned the land on the front of our road, Mr. Garrett, a man who made it his business to know what was going on around him knew nothing about the missing roof and he always knew when we were up at the farm. So I’ll let you do the adding. Anyway someone up there got a slightly used roof for their barn or hopefully their house and they were too poor and not too cheap to buy instead of stealing someone’s roof. It was one of the factors that contributed to the barn falling.
The Horse barn was never more then a shell that we used as a target gallery. Glass bottles, cans anything that would explode upon impact, that is until we stated having to walk around the horse barn and couldn't because of all the hazzards.
In 1966 the entrance to the farm, land owned by the afore mentioned Guy Garrett formerly of Brooklyn was a slightly over grown hole in the side of the road. There was no gate, no sign and if you were driving too fast you would end up way past it before you we aware you had passed it. Turning into the road you’d cringe as small trees and wild black and red raspberries would scratch against the sides of your car. Tires would slide through rut that would only grow bigger with each splash and some would make small lakes. Riding on the center of the road, staying out of the larger ruts you would make your way up the first little hill on disappear into the country side. About half way down the half mile driveway you would get to the two birch trees that flanked the road. Sometime in the early seventies some of the Cameron’s came over and talked about using birch bark to make boats and they had taken some from our birch trees on our road. A little further on down the road it flattens out and for many years there was no problem with pot holes and ruts.
There were two trouble spots on the road. The first one was a break in the stone wall that always seemed too narrow and when we were young too hard to widen. The second spot was the tunnnel of trees and the big ditch near the road. It always felt like you might slide into the hole on rainy days.
Arriving at the tunnel of trees meant that you were about to enter the property we owned. Down a little hill on the side of the road was a green gate that was never closed. Just before the tunnel of trees there is a large hole dug into the ground. It was a question mark in our minds for years. It turns out that Guy Garrett used his bulldozer to dig up the ground and block the road to the house when Bill Vines owned it. Mr. Vines and Mr. Garrett had it out at one point in the courts and the road became a legal easement and there was nothing any future owner of the property could do about it and Mr. Garrett never tried with us and he was never a warm and fuzzy friendly person either.
The road ended at the front lawn and every year we would come up in August the grass would be at least waist high, depending on what year it was and how much you’d grown over the previous year.
One of the first things we would do upon getting up there was to call Mr. Dibble. I don’t remember his first name and they used to populate the mountain like there was no tomorrow. After Mr. Dibble died the clan seemed to die off or move away. There are still some Dibbles up there, but it is not like it used to be when they would all get together and have a picnic and someone I guess Brian Cockcroft said it was called the Dibble day picnic.
Mr. Dibble would cut our small open space and trim the trees over hanging the road in and charge a few bucks for the job. We would then collect the hay and pile it under the tree fort and jump out of the tree fort into the hay. Back then when kids did dangerous things like that they didn’t get hurt.
Sometime in the first few years we owned the property, the conversation department was paid to help us put up a pond. They don’t do stuff like that anymore. They came in found a sight bulldozed it put in drainage pipe and the rest was yours. For us that was waiting for it to fill up.
The fall before it filled up, one of the rare times my dad was up there, we were all down there looking over the pond, us kids playing around. I noticed my dad raking the far side of the pond. He said he was getting all the rock out of the way. So us kids with our short attention span get involved in another section of the pond and since the rocks were too big to pick up we are rolling them down the slopes to the deeper sections of the pond. Our enthusiasm lasts for a short while. Next summer when we go swimming we are all slipping and tripping on all these rocks that we didn’t move and now wished we had, everywhere that is except on the far shore where my dad racked it out.
The Property when we first owned it consisted of about one hundred and twenty-four acres. Bill Vines said it included a rock quarry that he had let some people take stone out of. It was disputed and we made no effort to claim it. Years later the area was surveyed and the rock quarry was not part of it. The property bordered in the east, up the hill the Cockcroft’s, down the hill to the south was once Dugas’s but had been sold to some people who weren’t up much. To the west toward Beatty brook rd. it was the people whose house would burn around the end of August one year and they had a daughter named Fern. And of course to the north was Guy Garrett’s property. Stuck in the northeast corner state land snuck in there. They were usually good neighbor to have. They never had wild parties and never carelessly shot their guns in your direction.
That was the way it was back in 1966.
