Eastern Iowa Farmer Fall 2020

STICKLEY
ELECTRIC
THE RIGHT
FIT FOR
ALL YOUR
ELECTRICAL
FARM
NEEDS
Stickley
Electric
Service, Inc.
563-652-2439
Fax: (563) 652-2430
113 Western Ave.,
Maquoketa, IA
growth released, with the role
of top predator vacated by the
loss of our cat, the swallow
population exploded to the
point of public nuisance, a
proper unvoiced but eloquent
eulogy for the unique role
played by our dear departed
cat who could both strategize
bird hunting techniques and
avoid ambuscades and frontal
assaults by another top predator,
our dog.
Now, this year the burgeoning
swallow population has
been replaced (thus far) by a
rag-tag riot of quarrelsome
English sparrows who have
spurned the artistically designed
barn swallow nests for
their own tattered and unkempt
nests drooping distastefully,
almost parasitically, from
the smooth, wooden pinned
elegant frame of timbers that
provides support not only
for the barn but also for their
thrown-together nests. One or
two swallows still sit perched,
perplexed and confused, wondering
what happened to the
old neighborhood.
The wooden framework of
timbers that the bird population
find so convenient for
their nests is truly a wonder
in itself. We marvel at the
carpentry and joinery skills
needed to hew the oak support
beams for the weight of the
overhead storage spaces and
to construct the interlocking,
braced mortise and tenon
joints secured by wooden
pins, and we suspect that those
skills must fade back into the
mists of time. And indeed they
do. Those skills can be traced
directly back to the time of
the first farmers in Europe,
between 8,000 and 7,000
years ago. The three-bayed
pole barn is a form of the long
house that those early farmers
learned to build from the vast
timber lands of central and
western Europe.
Even in our day, it gives
pause to consider that the early
settlers of Wright’s Corners,
just south of Maquoketa, in
old barns
the l840s had to tend fires at
night to fend off marauding
wolves from their flocks of
sheep valuable, in those twilight
days of homespun, more
for their wool than their meat.
The long houses of those
early European farmers, constructed
generally with three
bays with two rows of poles to
support the roof, were among
the largest wooden buildings
anywhere in the world. They
were oriented to the southeast
and periodically burned
every three generations or
so, perhaps to control vermin
or perhaps for ritual reasons
marking the passage of the
generations; no one knows
why exactly.
These early farmers also
constructed wooden wells,
which still survive, surprisingly,
in their waterlogged
condition. Parts of Europe
have available sequences of
tree rings which can be used
to date wood going back
almost to the Ice Age, and the
oak timbers of these wells can
be dated to the precise years
that they were cut, all before
5000 B.C. These well timbers
were shaped into planks
and the wells were built with
interlocking log-cabin style
joints and also with mortise
and tenon joints locked with
wooden cog pins.
Think of it: this work was
done 2000 years or so before
metal tools, using instead polished
stone axes and adzes and
bone chisels. It puts the vaunted
traditions of the stonework
of the freemasons to shame, at
least in terms of age.
And yet many of these old
barns have been abandoned.
But not entirely. Left to fall
prey to nature and the weather
means only that we humans
have left — other opportunists
have moved in.
No longer burdened with
the baleful stress of human
proximity, groundhogs, and
even the occasional badger,
move in to merrily dig and
stake claim under foundation
30 Eastern Iowa Farmer | fall 2020 eifarmer.com