1st Place - $500 Shopping Spree
Sally Thompson
Winterset , IA

When I was 10, we left the big city and moved to a farm. I was lonely, but soon found sanctuary in our old barn. I would take my book up there and curl up in the hay with all our cats. I'd listen to the pigeons and watch the swallows. Soon I became fascinated with the birds and decided I was going to raise them. I would climb up to the rafters and take the babies out of their nest. I did raise them all, sneaking bread and milk out of the house. I would soak the bread and then use tweezers to feed the babies. Whenever I got in trouble, I got grounded from the barn. So I would bribe my brothers to go up and get my babies for me, and I'd put them in my closet. Before the summer was over I decided I was actually going to hatch one. So one Sunday, it was Father's Day, I snuck up to the barn and this time got a couple of eggs out of the nest. Our yard was filled with all of my aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. No one noticed I was gone. I figured I would start a small fire to keep the eggs warm (remember, I was 10). When you do the addition, dry hay, middle of July, and matches, the inevitable happened. I was doing everything I could to get the fire put out, but soon I heard yelling and screaming, everyone had seen the smoke. So I ran over to the shoot and slid down it. I came walking around the corner of the barn as everyone was running in. We were lucky, the fire was contained to the box I was trying to hatch the eggs in. The twine had created all the smoke. No one was hurt, and no one knew who had set it. That was 30 years ago, and just about 2 years ago I finally confessed to my family what had really happened. The irony to this story is that 2 days ago my son called me at work. He went outside and found a baby bird lying on the sidewalk, so guess what we are raising again?

2nd Place - 1 Year Supply of SimpliFly
Tammy Skinner
Athens , GA

When I was a youngster, I spent a summer at my great uncle’s farm in middle Georgia. He milked the cows every morning and evening and squirted milk from the cow’s teats to the barnyard kittens. They would stand on their hind legs and with their front paws; lick the milk from their little faces. It was amusing to a young city girl. One afternoon, I heard the cries of some small kittens in the top of an old dilapidated barn near the hayloft. I climbed up the ladder and found them near the weather-rotted window. Just as I bent down and picked one up, the floor gave way and I fell through, landing on a partition that separated the bull from the rest of the herd. My great uncle and aunt watched in horror as I was still holding the kitten. Not knowing how much danger that I was in, I proudly showed them the new kitten. Without having a heart attack and not the slightest change in his tone of voice, he instructed me to jump off of the partition, away from the bull. Needless to say, I had no idea that I could have been injured or killed by that 1800 lb. creature in the stall next to me. I did get to keep the kitty and named him "Jinx" after my great uncle!

3rd Place - Gift Basket
Amy Magnuson
Marshall , MN

Most Unusual Barn: The farm we own has an old wood barn. It used to belong to my father, who bought it from his father, who got it from his. In the 1920’s there were barn dances in the hayloft, complete with a band and prohibition bootleg alcohol - yep - even the greatest generation was “naughty” sometimes! The barn started out as a horse barn for the work teams, then another section was added on in 1931 for a dairy. It is 28 x 70 feet and has been the primary residence of critters and the critter-related stuff of my family for generations. In the 1930’s my dad rode a blind Shetland pony to country school and its home was the old barn. When dad got older the barn housed a larger pony that could pull a buggy so he could take his little sister to school, too. When dad was a teenager he got inspired and made a trapeze out of the hay ropes in the loft (I would’ve loved to see that). The old barn was where my brother broke his leg by falling down a hay chute when he was five years old. It was where my beloved mare had her first foal, her gift to me, in the same pen that my grandfather’s workhorses once lived. It was a barn that started on fire, but was saved. A barn that was hit by tornado-strength winds, but survived, albeit slightly tilted! It is where my children play today, sealing the warm hay-n-straw smells in their memories for life; it is where they pause mid-stride at the tiny sound of a kitten crying, and search out its nest of cozy softness and wonder; it is where they swing on the long ropes in the loft as their grandfather did 60 years ago. It is an unusual barn because of its large size, unusual for its variety of inhabitants, unusual in its many and varied owners, and unusual in its longevity. Mostly, it is unusual because of its meaning to the countless lives it has sheltered and protected through the years. To them, it was a safe haven, and it was their home.