Russian River Barn

Old barns are common along roadsides in Sonoma County, but I never tire of the character and beauty they add to the landscape. Many are no longer in use; seemingly held together by nothing but peeling paint, their roofs sag and the walls bear holes big enough to accommodate all sorts of critters. Yet somehow these barns manage to keep standing. I like to think they’ve grown roots, like the old oak trees from which they were built, that each is digging ever deeper into the soil in order to prop up its increasingly frail frame. This old barn along West Side Road complements the season’s earthy browns and greens, now that recent rains have washed away much of autumn’s warmer tones.

6 thoughts on “Russian River Barn

  1. Diggin’ this sketch, Richard!

    Scenes of falling barns and outbuildings are plentiful around here in Virginia. Sad, really. All that energy and craftsmanship in those structures. People who lived and loved those buildings for what they enabled — farming, living, growing. They used them. Needed them. Now they’re ghosts of what was.

  2. Thanks Steven, Yeah, some people aren’t good stewards of their property and some of that could be that farming its self has changed so much over the last few decades. Big Farming companies have pushed many of the family farmers out of business.

  3. We have an old barn back in the field that has a new purpose. Someone from the owl rescue hung an old plastic barrel in the eaves and for the past two years we have had baby owls! Great sketch of the old barn!

  4. Wow Cathy, that is so cool! I love owls. It sounds like another great place to sketch too.

  5. As picturesque as these old, barely-standing barns are, they can’t stand forever. There should be an effort to preserve them. When farms are bought, perhaps the preservation of the barn could be a condition of the sale. But YOU are doing your bit, preserving them in your sketches and paintings.

  6. Thanks Jean, I agree, I’d like these old barns to stick around as long as they can. They can really make a landscape scene worth painting too!

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