Michael Arthur Taylor's Blog
February 20, 2022
January 26, 2022
January 15, 2022
January 9, 2022
January 4, 2022
December 23, 2021
December 18, 2021
December 14, 2021
December 13, 2021
December 9, 2021
The barn…a sense of place…
From the 10th chapter of Growing Up Floridian: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09...
Blog: https://www.growingupfloridian.org
The barn on the Colvin Quarter Circle A Ranch, which sat on property off State Road 62 seven miles of Parrish, FL housed much more than animals and machinery durning the time the structure held sway over the ranch headquarters. Someone driving through the Gamble Creek tree line and up the single lane shell and dirt road might noticed the four residential buildings first, but the barn loomed over the landscaper as a benevolent beacon.
Built during the first year we came to the Quarter Circle A Ranch in 1958, the barn dwarfed all the other structures on the ranch. The ranch's owners, the Colvin family, lived in a definitive Florida Cracker home raised off the ground three feet by stone pilings and featured a seldom-used fireplace, four bedrooms, and a huge screened-in porch facing south under a long sloping tin roof.
The Blackstone residence was a simple Florida Cracker farmhouse with a small front porch and three bedrooms flanked by a free standing carport. Two ranch-hand houses, modest two bedroom concrete block houses with shingled roofs, could fit under one end of the barn. Even the windmill in the center of the pasture in which all the buildings sat was not as tall as the peak of the barn's tin roof, which shimmered in the sun from a couple of miles away in any direction. In thunderstorms, the pounding rain and rippling echoes of thunder reverberated within the barn in ways that rivaled crashing crescendoes of great classical music symphonies.
That barn, the site of enlightening moments during my childhood, enticed visitors, both human and animal, with scents that drifted out of stalls, pens, and storage areas. Tasks, livestock, people, and simple observations offered lessons I did not receive in a classroom, at home, or by reading on my own. Some were physically painful; others were entertaining; still others were emotional roller-coaster rides. The barn offered a sanctuary during storms, a place to get out of the Florida heat, and an environment to commune with ranch animals, both domestic and wild. All incorporated the Floridian ranch life experience to foster my early perceptions about what life would hold for me as I journeyed through the year.
Blog: https://www.growingupfloridian.org
The barn on the Colvin Quarter Circle A Ranch, which sat on property off State Road 62 seven miles of Parrish, FL housed much more than animals and machinery durning the time the structure held sway over the ranch headquarters. Someone driving through the Gamble Creek tree line and up the single lane shell and dirt road might noticed the four residential buildings first, but the barn loomed over the landscaper as a benevolent beacon.
Built during the first year we came to the Quarter Circle A Ranch in 1958, the barn dwarfed all the other structures on the ranch. The ranch's owners, the Colvin family, lived in a definitive Florida Cracker home raised off the ground three feet by stone pilings and featured a seldom-used fireplace, four bedrooms, and a huge screened-in porch facing south under a long sloping tin roof.
The Blackstone residence was a simple Florida Cracker farmhouse with a small front porch and three bedrooms flanked by a free standing carport. Two ranch-hand houses, modest two bedroom concrete block houses with shingled roofs, could fit under one end of the barn. Even the windmill in the center of the pasture in which all the buildings sat was not as tall as the peak of the barn's tin roof, which shimmered in the sun from a couple of miles away in any direction. In thunderstorms, the pounding rain and rippling echoes of thunder reverberated within the barn in ways that rivaled crashing crescendoes of great classical music symphonies.
That barn, the site of enlightening moments during my childhood, enticed visitors, both human and animal, with scents that drifted out of stalls, pens, and storage areas. Tasks, livestock, people, and simple observations offered lessons I did not receive in a classroom, at home, or by reading on my own. Some were physically painful; others were entertaining; still others were emotional roller-coaster rides. The barn offered a sanctuary during storms, a place to get out of the Florida heat, and an environment to commune with ranch animals, both domestic and wild. All incorporated the Floridian ranch life experience to foster my early perceptions about what life would hold for me as I journeyed through the year.
