The hunt for old buildings

Since we explored that broken old house those couple weeks ago, I now find that my are eyes constantly on the lookout for beautiful abandoned old buildings.  Old grey wood peaks out from the built up tree fortresses that protect nearly everyone's yard here from wind and obscure them from sight. The question is always "what is behind there?", as we peer down driveways and crank our heads as we pass by.  Sometimes it's a beautifully well kept or lovely house, sometimes it's a simple place, often there are a variety of farm buildings, usually there is at least one leaning building, sometimes there are many.

There is one yard that we often drive by and we get a long look at what clearly used to be a large and beautiful barn of excellent quality. Now it's a sagging, rippling, somehow still standing tired thing that has long outlived its glory days. But it is still beautiful. And it belongs to our neighbour who issued us an invitation to go take a look at it sometime. We didn't drag our feet on that one, and while the barn was just as interesting close up, we found even more of a treasure back further from the road; a two story house. It had been built with the same eye to quality as the barn but left so long that we couldn't enter through the front door - it was barred by the curl of the kitchen tiles. It was the most stunning old building find yet: wallpaper cascading off the walls, plaster crunching under our feet, and light streaming as we open doors and entered the colourful rooms through beautifully trimmed doorways.

We also spent an afternoon church hunting.  We set out to find the oldest synagogue in Saskatchewan (1906) and discovered more than one country church and accompanying graveyard (as well as a pretty winding road along a river valley). These churches, established when the farmers established themselves in this land, seem largely unused now, although some of the buildings are kept up. They are overwhelming Ukranian.

We've been checking off some projects this week. Jeff has been relentlessly tackling the weeds and cutting and tidying the areas of long grass on the west side of our property. It's revealed more space and it looks a lot better (except for the piles of old and rotting wood it's uncovered). I've been coming behind and eagerly gathering much of the clippings for my compost/mulch pile thinking of now and of the spring. Our garden tools now have a home again so it's not a game of hide and seek every time we need one; I created a garden storage area in the garage. Also, I've been busy adding colour to all the handles, so that when they are trying to hide say in a bush or a pile of grass, they're easier to find.