Hello Agrivillers.

[parsley]

Not much experience with old leather. Define old. Could a little value. Not sure about the water if too old. Wood trees and dry rot leather. No bath tubs I think.

About the barn. Moved on the place in 75. Lumber all commercially sold fir back in 26. No extra dimension or hand planed/grooved. Gambrel roof.
Remember an adjuster saying after small twister took shingles once. "Dont know how these things stand at all". New cedar shingles then. Dont paint those things.
Sorry no original pics. Slings still hanging off rail on peak today tho. Funny the sisal/hemp? rope hasnt broke yet.

You need to set up a campfire. Get some wieners and buns. And invite us over to a barn repair party. We could get a lot done in one evening.

IF the beer is cold. 😊 pars

[farmaholic]

I'm so pleased to talk barn. And old buildings. And architecture! An interest of mine. I've been working with some pics and my IMac rebelled so I had to take it to a techie. He told me I had 22K pics in it.

Yup.

Dance with me, then! Can you schottische, farm? 😂

Pars

Well then, if you like barns and dancing we should have a barn dance.... both of best worlds. Old time dancing is going to become a thing of the past, a lost art. But no Pars, I don't schottische, you can teach me.

I'll post some pics from my phone of an old barn that is probably doing everything it can do to keep it's roof from collapsing....boards bending under the strain.

[farmaholic]

[parsley]

It's so sad to see the barn groaning, delaying its' demise; refusing to surrender; and in the same mind, so glorious, fighting the good fight; battling the end with all its might.

Such is life.

You can sense it feels deserted. And unwanted. These are the things that make a soul shrivel.

[burnt]

Pars, we are no longer on the homestead farms that my ancestors took up from the Crown. After being in the family for about 100 years and 4 generations, they were sold off to others over the last 50 +/- years.

The farm I am on now has belonged to our family for about 53 years and 2 generations only.

However, we took the opportunity last year to return to the former homestead farm and took a look at the very old summer kitchen, which may have been the first permanent house built n that farm.

The picture below shows part of the fireplace (left-hand side of the pic) and the cast iron doors in the wall just to the right were the baking oven.

This summer kitchen was were the annual butchering bees would take place. The fireplace had an arm hinged on the one side, on which a big cast iron kettle hung to heat water for the occasion. A wooden workbench/table was supported on two walls and the cutting up took place on there.

Obviously, we all died from a lack of proper hygienic facilities, practices and methods...

Those were the days.

[sumdumguy]

Very interesting idea, the dummer kitchen. What was their purpose?

[sumdumguy]

Geez, that's "summer" not "dummer".

[burnt]

Most of the Amish and Old Order Mennonites still have and use a summer kitchen. As the name would indicate, it provided an extra kitchen, very simply furnished, in the summer time for the food preserving process, keeping all the heat, steam and mess of canning out of the main kitchen.

There is usually a wood stove of some sort, either a kettle stove for heating water or a regular kitchen wood stove on which the canners full of jars of canned vegetables, fruit or meat would be heated. Then the hot jars would be set out on a wooden table or shelves to cool off before being transferred to the "cold cellar".

Although we depend on our freezers for storing most of our meat and home-grown vegetables, my wife still does a fair bit of canning, as do both of our daughters-in-law. And when they are doing the canning, the crowded kitchens turn into a bit of a steam bath, the cupboards are loaded down with jars and bowls, and there's no room to even sit down at times. That's when one realizes how handy it would be to have a summer kitchen, keeping all the mess and heat out of the main part of the house.

Don't know if that helped explain a summer kitchen or not.