Old barns and haylofts

I’ve had the good fortune to spend considerable time in haylofts, some sizable, others sparse. There are as many different shapes and sizes of haylofts as there are old country barns. Still, most hay lofts have certain things in common.
Hay lofts smell the best in late summer when the fresh baled harvest of the year is piled high. It is the verdant smell of a season of sunshine, rain, breezes and mother earth leaking out the cut ends of each blade of grass. If you sit in a hay loft in mid-winter, there is still a lingering of those elements, mingled with the fine dust of old barn boards and gravel roads.
Hay lofts are not a place for the feint-of-heart. Old barn boards get creaky, announcing their age with every step. Knots fall out of pine floor boards, allowing rays of light to peak through. Old machinery, such as rusted elevators, hides in the recesses and dark corners.
Hay lofts are attractive places for the wild members of the farm family. Raccoons have been known to rear their young nestled between bales. Young pigeons take their first flight practice over the mounds of hay. And barn cats lie in wait to challenge intruders large and small.
I’ve been in hay lofts in early spring when most of the year’s hay has been consumed. Spring hay lofts are spacious and airy. There’s a feel of expectation for the arrival of the coming crop. I’ve been in hay lofts in mid-summer when the sounds are of young boys calling to each other as new bales are stacked, and the smell is the sweat of old men trying to keep up.
I’ve been in haylofts in early fall when the air is crisp and the smell of summer mingles with the falling leaves. One can sit in the doorway resting against a mound of hay and contemplate the changing seasons, sometimes watching the deer pick through the last morsels in the far-off fields. I’ve been in hay lofts where the smell of mold and decay represent the ghosts of a farm long neglected.
At The Equestrian Cooperative, where I am a board member, we don’t have a hay loft. And though we won’t be able to sit on the high perch of the hay loft door, we’ll still be able to enjoy the smells and scenes of a fresh crop of hay stacked and waiting for the horses’ pleasure in our hay storage building. Hopefully, some of that harvest will come from the AERC land; organic hay, maybe even harvested with horse-power.