MMDT Challenge #16: Barn

I am so excited to share this post with you! 

This was a magical day that I stumbled upon way back in April ... and I have been waiting all of this time to share my study of texture.

This property was recently purchased by my husband's co-worker. On a day that I was feeling low, my husband asked me if I would like to ride out to the property to pick something up. Not anticipating getting out of the car, I went, in my pajamas.

No one was home, but I asked my husband if I could look in the barn. I have not been in a barn since I was a kid and wanted to check it out.

The minute I entered, I fell in love.

The beams were enormous -- I cannot imagine trees so big -- and you could see the ax marks where they hewed the beam by hand.

This was one of the posts holding up a gate ... look at all of those growth rings and how close they are together.

The barn was huge -- some of the smaller beams still had the bark on them. The nails and some of the hardware was hand forged.

I couldn't stop thinking of the men who built the barn a century and a half ago by hand. It honestly blew my mind and I knew I had to take pictures to remember it. Since I hadn't planned on taking pictures, I didn't have my camera. Figuring bad pictures were better than none, I used my iPhone. An hour later, I would have to admit the iPhone has a pretty good camera.

Fortunately, we get plenty of notice on DT projects, so I made this one right after I took the photos and have been waiting months to share it.

These pages are very simple because I wanted to show as many photos as I could and I had a lot to say ... it was an amazing experience and I wanted to remember every detail.

Here's a closer look at the left side ...

And a closer look at the right side ... I pieced the barn photos together to get an overall shot. The roof behind the silo had already collapsed when I was there.

While we were there, the sun began to set and the real magic began as the light reflected off of the silo and through the holes in the roof. I wanted to show the magic, so here is a photo of the silo when we first got there ...

And how much different it looked with the sun setting on it ...

Here is that same magical light coming in through the damaged roof ... 

Sadly, the barn was in bad shape and had to be torn down. I wanted to go back and have another look, but it was gone just a few days after I took these photos. But I did get to explore it once and I have a rusty metal hook hanging in my kitchen that once lived in this amazing barn.