Tag: Moydalgan Barn

“A barn is a sanctuary in an unsettled world, a sheltered place where life’s true priorities are clear. When you take a step back, it’s not just about horses — its about love, life, and learning.”
~ Lauren Davis Barker, editor of “Flying Changes”

Most people who know me would say I do live in a barn, and it is true that many of my waking hours at home are spent in the barn — cleaning, feeding, storing away, mulling and just being.  But I have never actually lived in a barn, that is, until today.

Dan and I are spending much of the next week living in a old stone barn built around 1802 in County Down in Northern Ireland, on the old Jones farm where Dan’s great great grandmother Susan Jones Macrory, was born and lived.   Now owned by Jones’ descendants Keith and Elizabeth Smith, Moydalgan Barn has been converted into a cottage that is set in the middle of some of the most beautiful farmland.    I am now sitting in the loft, in a bedroom where hay once was piled high.  Dan is overwhelmed by the emotions of staying on the farm where his Scottish-Irish ancestors were born and lived and walked.

It is the beginning of two weeks of local countryside travels that will take us to landscapes I hope to remember here.

And to remember, anything that is important, anything that means anything, started in a barn.