At dawn and dusk the Whirlwind Hill cows passed through the barnyard. All the food they ate during the day went into making the milk and the other products that they left behind before they went out to pasture again. My grandfather and uncles gathered up those “other products,” put them into the manure spreader, and carted them to the fields to feed the crops. “Waste not, want not” was what farm life was all about.
The door into the cow barn faced east. I like to think of my ancestors greeted by the rising sun as they left the barn in the morning to go back to the farmhouse for their coffee and breakfast and by the westward sunset in the evening as they crossed Whirlwind Hill Road to join the family in the warmth of the kitchen for supper.
“The Barnyard,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache, 2015
On Monday: Games and Grandparents
What a wonderful painting! The warm colors are a very pleasing contrast to the stark white of the deep snow we still have. Is this from memory or were you using a reference shot, or shots? If the latter, when was it taken? My memory of the farm is fuzzy at this point and there are fences and other structures that aren’t in my minds eye when I ride down the hill on my bike. It looks like there is a trolley set up to take the manure from the barn outside to be dumped in the spreader. Is that righ? I always thought that was a smart and efficient system before electrified gutter conveyors were developed. As always, you are stirring wonderful memories and feelings. Thanks.
Thanks, Mike. I used a couple black and white photos from the 1950’s as reference, so I might not be totally accurate. Yes, that was the trolley for the manure to go into the spreader. The fencing went down on either side of the lane to the little pond. My painted fence posts are a lot thicker than the originals – it was a barbed wire fence. But, again, that’s my artistic license working. My most vivid memory of the barnyard was of how mucky and smelly it was. And that manure gave off a lot of heat!
Oh lovely spring painting!
Thanks, Katy. I did enjoy doing this little painting and thinking about the New England spring.
Wow!! Carol that farm painting is wonderful – I can feel the sun on that grassy field and also in early AM. Some folks really notice the world and its beauteous changes like your grandparents. Well done.
Thank you so much Netzy. I miss seeing your little paintings. Hope you’re still creating them!