By rights it should have been bulldozed. Farms are like this when old stuff gets in the way, when sheds don’t fit the tractors anymore, when barns don’t fit the cows, and when fields and woods don’t fit center pivots. Buildings, even land forms, can get old, grow antique, become hard to maintain; some are plain useless except as a shed for trash and wheelbarrows, most with flat tires. Farms, as said, are like that.
It should have been bulldozed, in fact there is even evidence the deity was in favor of the bulldozer. Four times in the last five generations a tornado has taken off its roof. Four times this old creamery has been rebuilt. Still four times ought to tell you something pretty straight, that nature’s god has a grudge against this structure, or at least its roof.
The creamery is the stone milkhouse dating from my grandfather’s use. In turn it became Uncle Curtis’ farm, Uncle Kingsley’s farm, with my brothers and I buying the farm in ’72 or ’73. We cleared the fences, cleared the trees, took down the barn, and installed that marvel of portable prayer, the center pivot. But we did leave the granary, the shop and the creamery because it was a solid sort of structure, solid stone that is.
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