Hayloft

 John Eastman

American Hayloft

This painting was posted on a beautiful art blog I just discovered called It's About Time.  Anyway, it brought back memories.

 Our farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania

I suppose parents these days would never allow their kids to play in a dangerous hayloft. You don't even see children playing alone outdoors anymore, at least not in our neighborhood. Like farm kids everywhere, my brother, sister and I would spend hours playing up in the loft, lost in a dusty fantasy world with the mice and feral cats. Who needs toys when you have a hayloft?

The Hayloft
by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Through the pleasant meadow-side
The grass grew shoulder high,
Till the shining scythes went far and wide
And cut it down to dry. 

The green and sweetly smelling crops
They led the waggons home;
And they piled them here in mountain tops
For mountaineers to roam.

Here is Mount Clear, Mount Rusty-Nail,
Mount Eagle and Mount High:-
The mice that in these mountains dwell,
No happier than I! 

O what joy to clamber there,
O what a place for play,
With the sweet, the dim, the dusty air,
The happy hills of hay.

Helen Allingham

Children in the Hayloft