Farmyard Visit - 1964

From either direction as you come along the country road you can see the barns in all their glory, red with white trim; painted fresh after WW2, when paint was available again. - Next house down the road painted red and white to match the scene, like pictures of rural Sweden in National Geographic - The farmhouse on the hill, all weathered wood never painted, almost a pastel grey. The house itself is four generations old, surrounded by oaks and elms. The whole overlooks a lake of about a mile in circumference. If you stand with your back to the lake then there is an orchard to the left, past the two-holer outhouse. That orchard is as old; it seems, as Johnny Appleseed himself. Yet, now untended, trees untrimmed, fruit all stunted.1

To the right of the house is a lane cut through the hillside. Safe enough when horse and cart were all that moved upon the road. Then came bitumen and cars, and the double s-bend and blind drive are dangerous. Walk up the drive and smell a barnyard full of barnyard smells.2

The acrid waft of guano, ‘cause his chickens free range in the daytime, chasing insects round. As you come upon the open plan of the barnyard you see on your right, stables, equipment barn, cattle barn. Straight ahead, pump house, where a windmill used to stand. Electrification in the 1930’s brought that to an end. Upper left the hen house. Behind the pump a corn crib. The starchy fragrance of drying corncobs in the wood-framed crib draws the hens every day to see if any kernels have fallen to the ground. 3

On the left two sheds, one for tools, one for his 1936 White sedan. There the smell is of oils and metal sitting, of horsehair seats. The walls covered with licence plates from his first car until now. The old car on blocks waiting for the local dentist to finish paying for it, and haul it out of storage to be restored.4

I walk to the stables and swing open the doors. Horses gone some years ago, but leather worked for decades keeps its horsy smell. Barn cats and owls the only residents now. All the harnesses hung, clean and ready for the team that will never come. Next barn, empty of a century’s worth of horse drawn carts, manure spreaders, ploughs, hay rakes, and such; all the equipment sold to collectors and hobby-farmers. The fields share-cropped now, all in corn. You can smell the ploughed fields and new sown seed, the soil still clodding from recent rains.5

There is the swampy smell of pond scum pooled at the outflow of the watering trough. There several ancient goldfish move lazily as the cattle drink. And here the dairy barn, my favourite as a child. Old oak timber beams, deep nut-brown, dressed in generations of cobwebs. The smell of hay in upper storey; old , dry, dusty at the back, fresher, sweeter near the double-doors that empty into space and overlook the fields; lifting tackle hanging down like some warehouse along canal in old Amsterdam. And barn-cat kittens crowding bowl of cream in the milking parlour. Aged smells, six stalls clean, but odours of milk and dung linger, naturally. Only two Jerseys left - arthritic hands are slow at milking - and when cows go, so too the farm.6

Fifth generation moved to city, and the old house is set for demolition when the octogenarian farmer dies. Barnyard smells of my neighbours farm bring other memories. Of homemade preserves in ancient storage jars in the storm cellar. Of holding the hand of the farmer’s wife as she lay dying in her bed. Of the smell and feel of old linoleum. Of a cast iron stove. Of turning the crank on the cream-separator. Of the milk tins on the side porch waiting for the truck to come and pick them, leaving two empties behind.7

But most of all I remember the unshaven farmer, three day’s stubble on his face, smelling of corn dust and sour milk.8

I walk back down the path to the road. Intricately carved, the road-facing sign proclaims – “Van Schoyk 1836”.9

In the year it was gone.10

James Gagiikwe © 200811