Originally the Ontario Barn Preservation newsletter, August 2024.

Dear Members,

Thank you to Claudia Smith and Dr. John Carter, we have a new Barn Book Reference List. If you're looking for something to read this summer, especially about Ontario rural history and barns, take a look at our new list. 

Hugh Fraser and Randy Bagg have updated the information about 'Your Old Barn Study' on our site. There is a new and improved checklist about how to start the Study and what you might get together before you start. 

The next Tenon Talk is scheduled for September, 10th at 8:00 PM. Members will get an email notice with the link. 

A FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

I've been working on a FAQ for the Ontario Barn Preservation website. I hope it will help people looking for barn repairs or information about what to do when their barn isn't in great shape. Most of our emails are asking for help with fixing up an old barn. 

I also found a wonderful pdf (free to download) file from the Iowa Barn Foundation: "First Steps in Barn Preservation". I wish we had written this. It includes a checklist at the end. 

Your Barn Could be for Dancing!

My Grandparents met at a country dance, in Ontario. I don't know if it was in a barn (a barn dance) but it could have been. In school we were taught how to square dance. Our gym teacher thought it would keep the class busy near the end of the school year when not much was planned. 

Now line dancing seems to be the popular country style dance. I guess its simpler for people. But, learning the steps was a lot of fun. Square dancing is one of the things I remember most about any gym class while I was in school. 

I found square dancing groups in Ontario, and Canada. So, pull out your dancing shoes. If you have a barn, you might look at local groups and see if they need a place to dance. With a barn full of fiddle music, laughing and dancing it won't be long before you join in yourself. 

Canadian Square and Round Dance Society

Ontario Square & Round Dance Federation

Happy Summer,

Laura, Administrative Assistant with Ontario Barn Preservation

In case you missed it!

I posted this YouTube video link to our social media accounts. It's a movie made in 1923, a silent movie, about logging/ lumbering in Ontario. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn-4HnohRdQ 

I've been enjoying the video posts from Hidden Spring Farm in Coldwater, Ontario. https://www.youtube.com/@HiddenSpringFarm

"Hidden Spring Farm is a Homestead in the making. It's also a Farm Stay & Experience startup. Created by Chad & Remy Smith in 2020, Hidden Spring Farm is a super private and tranquil 90 acres and perfect to start an operational farm stay vacation rental. With a little tlc, hard work & creativity, we're hoping to turn this farm into a unique and amazing farm stay experience, while allowing us to share this property's beautiful qualities with others."

Beautiful quilted barn art from Quiltcore. Sold on Etsy as postcards, greeting cards, prints, t-shirts, mugs, and more. Artist from Olds, Alberta.

The Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies - A great source to find Ontario agriculture fairs listed.

Originally posted as the newsletter for the Ontario Barn Preservation, November 2024.

Dear Members,

A variety of things happen in early winter. Flu and colds. (I'm feeling better, thank you, and I hope none of you have been ill). Christmas shopping, or the thought of Christmas shopping and baking and cleaning. The first snowfall and finding where you left the snow shovel last season. 

Then there is the annual Canada Post strike just as you start thinking about sending or getting Christmas cards in the mail. 

I (Laura) do have a Christmas card in the works for our members again this year. My niece, Emma-Jeanne, has hand drawn a holiday barn with a few suggestions and ideas. I hope you will like it. She loves drawing and painting. She is a pastry chef by trade. 

Merry Early Winter, 

Laura I found this image on a wallpaper website. A broken link to another site given as the source. So, I don't know who made it.

Wild Animals Living in a Barn

Have you ever tried to make a list of all the animals (wild, not domesticated) that might live in a barn, in Ontario? Let me save you the trouble. If you look for "wild animals living in barns" online, the search gives you farm animals: cattle, pigs, goats, chickens, etc. AI (artificial intelligence) still isn't all the bright. 

First, lets start with barn cats. They are on the fence (jumped up there like it was nothing) because they aren't fully wild, nor quite domesticated. 

My list of wild animals found in Ontario barns: barn owls (if you're lucky), foxes, weasels, badgers, coyotes, chipmunks, bats, squirrels, rabbits, snakes, toads, skunks, raccoons, opossums. A pretty vast assortment of birds, rodents and usually very unwanted mice, pigeons, rats (vermin). Water birds seem unlikely and fish... well, don't be silly. Spiders and assorted insects (I almost forgot the little creatures).

Then there are bigger animals like bears, deer and moose, they seem less likely to be around unless the barn is pretty forgotten and abandoned quite awhile. You aren't likely to see wolves, cougars, or lynx either. Though I wonder if they'd like to find an out of the way old barn for the winter too. Probably a great way to keep out of the wind and find rodent snacks all winter long. 

This is my list. You can probably think of others to include like fishers, those less heard about and not often seen. My brother had a fisher at his rural place near Barrie and Orillia. I didn't see it, I wish I had, from a safe distance. It liked the old outhouse. It hasn't been seen for a couple of winters now. I like to think it found a nice barn for itself. 

57,000-year-old mummified wolf pup discovered in Canadian permafrost - "An incredibly well-preserved wolf pup thought to have lived 57,000 years ago was pulled out of the melting permafrost by a gold miner in Yukon, Canada"

Found in the Yukon, from a time long before there were barns. See how important barns can be, not just for farm animals! 

Ontario Government - Wildlife Management - link

Ontario Government - Creating Wildlife Habitat - link

Hinterland Who's Who: Grizzly Bear

Laura

In case you missed it!

Ontario Rural Diary Archive - Another (like our own 'Your Old Barn Study') rural history project with the University of Guelph. "Centennial farm is no more. It has been replaced with suburban developments, a phenomenon happening in large parts of North America. In earlier times, our important cities were usually built in areas of good farmland. These cities have, of course, grown, and in the last few decades we have been covering up thousands of acres of some of our best farmlands with cement. We are increasing this rate of development all the time.

The year 1967 was centennial year in Canada. As a personal celebration, I did a series of paintings based on those things in my home county of Halton in Ontario which had been there for at least 100 years. Some of these subjects were works of nature but many were the works of man - old barns, farmhouses, fences and so on. Although these things lasted for 100 years or more, every single one of them has been destroyed within the last two decades - they were all gone by 1987.

I think that it is a pity that we in North America are so cavalier about our natural and man -made heritage. In Europe there has been for many years a serious effort to preserve the family farm and to preserve man-made works of previous generations. Such a commitment to preservation requires us to pay attention and to pay for it. The Europeans consider it a worthy cost. We North Americans apparently don't, and so our heritage disappears, very often through carelessness and more often through greed.

I enjoy painting man-made subjects from earlier eras because they have character and individuality. It is evident that they have been worked on by the human hand and by the forces of nature. This can no longer be said of our machine-made, packaged world which is increasingly enveloping us." ~ Robert Bateman - November 12, 2024 Canadian artist, Robert Bateman, posted about barns. I reposted this to our social media accounts. 

One Last Thing...

Inspiration for gingerbread house makers this year... A Gingerbread Barn found on Reddit. This could be an artsy version, with extra fancy icing doodles. Or, a less candy version without lots of little things that keep falling off. 

If you feel nostalgic for more Hinterland Who's Who I found the updated new videos. For me its just not the same without the old music to start it off and the same announcer's voice. 

Or, you could find more with YouTube and other places that host videos.

Bonus link. I'm not sure this was included here, or might have just been shared on social media for OBP. Canadian Centre for Rural Creativity

Tis the season for driving along country lanes and finding apple trees loaded with fresh fruit, never picked. Kind of sad those trees that grow forgotten along the road. Once they would have been picked, the apples used in pies or eaten right off the tree. Now people just drive on by and only notice them in passing. Yet those are our history, our heritage.

Next time you see an apple tree stop and pick a few. Some may be bug eaten, but some of the brown patches are only places where it rubbed on the tree branch and not anything you can’t just peel away. It may be the best apple you have ever had, if you give them a chance. Of those I picked almost all were edible, not bug eaten as I expected they would be. One was especially delicious. It’s a shame I don’t know what kind of apple tree it came from.

Would you grow an apple from seed? Have you ever grown a plant from seed? Why not try one, even something tropical or exotic and have it grow by your writing space. Keep your seedling company and let it inspire you with something fresh and growing where you work.