from the mass farm bureau....
2021 04 7
It was a terrible fire.. the lucky horses were loose... but a few did not get out. .. I helped catch and tie them to trees.. when things quieted down... I realized these people now had some horses and no hay/grain/ buckets etc - so I went home and loaded the truck with bales of a\hay and a bag of grain to get them covered for the moment.
When I made the u-turn to get to their street, I looped thru home depot... parking lot.... Wait a minute---- I it was not my normal Home Depot but I do know them as relatively friendly ----so I went in an asked for the manager--- a guy named Rick Flynn and I told him abut a barn up the street had just burned down and wasn't there anything Home Depot could do to help the situation out like maybe give them a truckload of two by fours and then I left because I had to get the hay up to the barn---- I told him I'd be back---- so I dropped the hay off and they were beginning to cope with horses tide to trees ------by the way this was the barn where the carriage horses from Boston were kept at night and several did survive ...
so I went back to see Mr Flynn and he had gotten the idea that Home Depot has some community helping whatever and maybe if I could get organized he could get 100 people to help rebuild the barn .. so I started thinking .. there was a guy that lived next to Gwen my daughter in Ipswich who owned a hot dog and sausage company---- I wish I could remember the name it gave his company a plug ---hot dogs at any rate I called him and asked if he could provide cases of hot dogs so I could feed all these Home Depot people wanna spend a Saturday helping to start this barn ------he got into the swing of things and said he had a truck that he could send that had a grill and all that stuff including rollson paper towels and stuff and he thought that would be a good opportunity for his people to help and his truck was refrigerated which was nice so it began to go together ------now the barn was up at the end of a very narrow road and long driveway and I thought if we have people coming to help they're gonna have to park about 3 miles away and then walk up the road. how dull .. so I called the Yankee draft horse Association guy by the name of Alan to see if we couldn't get a bunch of draft horses to pull hay wagons to get people up the road to help build the barn .and Alan was very helpful and these people never thought anything of putting 2 draft horses at about a ton each. and aand driving to some fair and riding around in circles .. so I invited them to the barbecue at thebarn building .. well from there that friend dida.. of mine was very friendly with Rex trailer who was Boston's cowboy it had a morning show which all the kids watched a Boomtown .. he was basically retired but dide had an old horse of mine that he occasionally rode in parades so we got ahold of Rex who was very nice---a nice man and he was thrilled to lead the wagon train up to the barn with all these people from Home Depot --- I have pictures of Janine dragging lumber around.. my husband and friends provided the medical. And the fire dept sent an ambulance .. it was a huge deal...so went together very nicely and Home Depot delivered a lot of lumber some of it odd shaped or whatever that was sort of extra we got couple truckloads of things two by threes another and perfectly usable stuff so in the course of that one day we got an awful lot of that barn up the walls particularly with the help of the carpenters union in guy who thankfully was the only one who knew what on earth we were doing .. It was that Carpenter guy who taught me about leveling a building with a siphon hose because this was a really big big building it was 150 feet long---- I was in on the design of the construction which was done at a picnic table in the backyard as we tried to figure out how to hold up the hayloft with all these odd bits of lumber we had ..it's still there today..
the fire had been started by the space heater in an adjacent garage it took the best part of another month to finally get the roof on .. and after that first day with the party I really didn't have much to do with it although they gave me a great thank thank you party for having gotten the whole thing going I think maybe I'm good at getting things going and then bugging out of the details .
the parties were great but I got to know Alan then then maybe it's time for me to go introduce myself to Alan again and see if he can come down with his goats to go project what is they are interesting people they used to run a hay ride through their farm on Halloween night with people jumping out of trees and screaming and yelling and things so they are creative
we need more of those
I do have somewhere a vhs tape of the barn building. Nicely done by rex trailer’s video company.. i should find it......
How nice it was to have a bunch of people having a "blast" helping people. with one goal—barn building !!
