Reflections: A Man's Barn is His Castle

Sixteen years ago I set out to build a barn. It was December 2004. The date is easy to remember because it was the month in which our son was born. My parents were visiting from Australia, and although their visit was ostensibly for the purpose of admiring the newly-arrived grandson, I couldn’t help taking advantage of the extra pair of hands (my father’s, not my infant son’s) to have a go at building a proper barn. This one would be complete with an actual floor and walls to replace the dirt-floored, rat-infested lean-to that had been where stuff had gone to die at our house since time out of mind. So for a couple of weeks that December, my dad and I spent whatever free time we could snatch from the jaws of new parent-/grandparent-hood celebrating the passage of the Fox-Smith family name into another generation with a good, old-fashioned barn-raising. Or, we tried 

Neither of us, you see, is especially good at building things. The original structure from which we were working—it would be an insult to farm structures everywhere to call it a “barn”—consisted of six posts holding up a rusty tin roof. Consequently, it didn’t have a straight line or a right angle to call its own. So, for a couple of spatially-challenged amateurs trying to figure out how to add a raised floor, walls, windows and doors to the structure—all in the era before YouTube “how-to” videos—the obstacles were considerable. When it was time for my folks to go back to Australia, Dad and I had managed to add a floor and three walls to the barn—one wall short of respectable, in other words. Still, this seemed a good start, one that would surely put me in a position to finish the job in all the spare time I would have during the months to come. 

Sixteen years later that newborn son is six-foot-two, and my barn still only has three walls. But in the spirit of new year’s resolutions, that is about to change. With just days remaining in 2020, the unprecedented amount of additional home time that the year has provided means that for the first time since our son was in diapers, I have made actual progress on barn construction. In fact I feel confident in predicting that, by the time you read this, my barn ought finally to have achieved that holy grail of farm storage construction: full enclosure. This promises many benefits:

• Chickens will no longer use my tools and equipment as roosting real estate.
• It will be possible to enter the barn between April and October without being savaged by red wasps.
• Taking a household object or piece of furniture “to the barn” will no longer be a euphemism for sending it away to die. Because for the first time, we will have a place to store things without them being gnawed into sawdust by rats, mice, and carpenter bees. 

There is also something powerfully attractive about having one’s own space. Call it a “man cave” if you must; the point is that everyone benefits from having a place to call their own—to arrange as they see fit and to decorate according to any whim, no matter how objectionable to other members of the household. I am fortunate to live in my wife’s ancestral home—a modest but lovely old farmhouse in which not only my wife, but also her mother and her grandfather before her, were born and raised. Foolish would be the husband who married into such a circumstance harboring strongly-held opinions about interior decoration. Consequently, as much as I love this old house and the motley assortment of furnishings that came with it, I learned long ago that, in the interests of domestic harmony, all decisions about furnishing and interior design were best left to others. But in my barn, the universe operates by a different set of principles. If I choose that it be festooned with Christmas lights and follow a decorative scheme heavy on power tools and fishing equipment, so be it. 

[Read more on James's 2020 DIY adventures, here: Sisyphus Had it Easy]

Besides the chance to finally put a check mark by this almost two-decades-old task, the time at home offered by 2020 brought something else to light:  the deep and lasting sense of satisfaction that comes from building something with your own two hands. I think that during the strange, home-based year just gone, when more and more of our activities necessarily came to be transacted across the digital divide, a lot of us discovered, or rediscovered, the fulfillment that comes with analog, hands-on, creative endeavors. Whether that was gardening or baking or playing an instrument or building a barn, lots of us slowed down long enough to recognize the simple reward of the home-baked loaf or flourishing rose or sturdy miter joint, when it’s the product of your own two hands. The world is a big, noisy, complicated place—too big, probably, to be delivered into our hands via small, glowing screen without adverse consequences. This first-ever “Analog” issue of Country Roads sets out to celebrate the tangible, soul-satisfying benefit of the do-it-yourself, the hands-on, the here-and-now. And perhaps to inspire all of us to seek more of this sort of nourishment in 2021. After a year spent building things, I’m still not much of a carpenter, but the things built stand proud, their tangible proof of my efforts a reward in themselves. Maybe next year, I’ll  build a boat.