Still Barn Shopping

I have longed for a model horse barn since I was in elementary school. Breyer did not make barns at that time, so I took some scrap wood from my dad's workshop and built my own. I have looked for a photo of that barn for years, but it wasn't until this week that I finally found one.

My little homemade barn was a simple wooden box with a piece of pegboard as the partition between the two stalls. It had no roof so that I could access my models. (I remember adding one later since the front was also open.)

My sisters and me playing with the barn under our crab apple tree. There is "hay" under Leslie's feet (looks like we spilled the water trough, haha!) and you can see kernels of corn scattered on the ground that we were using as feed. (No doubt we went into the cornfield behind us and nabbed an ear of corn - you can see the corn husks on the ground behind me!)

I made do with that little homemade barn until it fell apart from use and could not be repaired one more time and was thrown away.

The earliest barn Breyer offered was in 1976. I was in college then and living in a dorm on Purdue's campus. There was absolutely no room for model horses, let alone a barn.

 Photo of 1976 catalog page from Identify Your Breyer.

Around 1990 Breyer offered the barn of my dreams. I was (and still am) especially fond of the ladder for some reason. But with six kids and me being a stay at home mom, our income was already stretched very thin. 

Besides that, there were eight people living in our home - where on earth would I put something that big? (Photo from Identify Your Breyer.)

Currently Breyer offers eleven different barns in a variety of scales. Our kids are grown and gone, and we rattle around in a house that has plenty of extra space. 

Sometimes I look at the barns that are available and wonder if it is time to finally get one. This one currently in the Breyer catalog isn't nearly as nice as the 1990 barn, but it's still pretty cool! (Photo from the Breyer web site.) 

At the 2019 BreyerFest I walked around the concourse and looked at the barns that were available.

They were lovely and they were expensive, although I am sure that the man who built them spent hours to make each one and deserved to be compensated for that. 

I probably will never get a barn for my model horses, and I am okay with that. I am lucky that I have been able to have access to real barns almost all my life.

Me with Scojeadon in 1971.

Still, the little girl within me sometimes whispers that it might be fun to keep looking. I think she's right.