Saturday, June 04, 2011

Reasons Why You Should Occasionally Clean Out the Barn

With tourist season upon us, and a film crew descending soon as well, the entire family decided that it was high time the barn got a little "spit 'n' polish." When we cleaned the barn stalls yesterday, we also cleaned the chicken coop and moved the young chickens into their new home (they had been previously residing in two large brooder tubs in the barn). We put Solomon the bunny in his outdoor run, and then we swept out the barn's "breezeway." After that, we took everything off of the storage shelves, and grabbed the leaf blower and went to work! Many hours later, and after much cleaning, we had a sparkling barn interior (or, at least as clean as the inside of a barn can ever HOPE to get).

Some of the boxes removed from the storage shelves had come from my grandparents' home in CA and had not been opened since...ah, the joys of moving! Upon opening them, we uncovered a treasure trove of items that belonged to both my grandfather and his parents!!

Amongst my favorite items:

A set of fountain pens that belonged to my great-grandfather, as well as the original box!

Note the gorgeous mother-of-pearl inlay on one of the pens.

Some lovely antique cigar boxes...

A beautiful "old-fashioned" shaving razor with lovely stone handle.

And my personal "squeal" score:

A set of three antique hat pins that must have belonged to my mysterious great-grandmother!!!!

What a fabulous find, and a great piece of my personal history!

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