Due to the unstable climate throughout the territory of Tsarist Russia, the peasants had a need to dry the sheaves removed from the field. This applies to flax and cereals. For this purpose, the peasants built a barn. What is it, how is it arranged? Unfortunately, to date, not all museums of wooden Slavic (Russian) architecture have these buildings. On the canvases of the artist V.F. Stozharov we can see these buildings, so easily recognized by his contemporaries and completely forgotten by us in the twenty-first century.
Organization of the drying process in the barn
Manual threshing of cereals was possible only under the condition of a dry spike (wet spikes were not completely ground).
Humid air in late summer and early autumn did not allow to keep the harvested crop dry. Sheaves were brought to a special wooden shed - a barn. The names could be different, depending on the territorial affiliation: shish - lightweight construction in Russian villages, yevnya - among Belarusians, sushi - in Ukraine.
Sheaves were placed vertically, and a fire was fired from below, the heat of which spikes were dried.
According to ancient beliefs, a witching creature lives in a barn - a sheepskin, without it the fire burns incorrectly, and the sheaves do not dry.
The lower room of the barn: what is it and how is it arranged inside
Wooden barn - a two-story room. At first, a hearth was set up. This pit measuring 3 x 4 meters, sometimes more, served as a firebox. The walls of such an earthen tier were strengthened with logs folded either like a log house - horizontally or vertically.
In very humid soils (in the northern regions), a pit was not dug, the lower tier was built either on the ground (high barn) or half-dug (half-high).
Sado - the second tier of the barn: what is this room? How is it arranged?
A tall wooden barn was erected above the hearth (it could be a log house, wattle, or less often adobe) the size of which was slightly smaller than the pit. A log was built over the remaining part (its height was less than the main log house) to enter the bottom.
The wall that was between the main room and the log did not reach the ground - this gap served as the entrance to the pit, then there was a stair descent.
The floor was laid tightly from thick boards or slabs. Between him and the walls organized slots - sinuses (up to forty centimeters wide), they served to transmit heat and smoke from the bottom.
At a small height (from ten to twelve centimeters), boards (shelves) with a width of sinus (or a little more) were inserted into the walls of the log house. They covered the cracks from above, preventing the grain from falling down and not letting sparks from below.
A thick (up to twenty centimeters) layer of earth or clay was laid out on the floor - this is underneath.
Above the hearth at a height of about a meter there were grates - long poles (wall to wall), laid at a short distance from each other (no more than twenty centimeters). Their loose ends fit onto two logs (or logs) cut into the walls. This allowed to clean the poles against the wall when cleaning after drying.
As a rule, the ceiling was not fixed in the sheepskin; there was only a thatched roof. Smoke passed easily through it, and the straw itself, due to smoking, did not rot and served long enough.
How the sheaves were dried in a barn
What kind of process is this and how was it organized in such a room, quite complex (during construction) and at the same time simple in architectural appearance?
In the lower tier (in the bottom), a bonfire was made of special logs (ovinniks) up to one and a half meters long. Experienced peasants did this, since the process itself depended on how the wood burns (how even the heat will be and without too much jumping flame).
The second peasant climbed into the garden through the window, sheafs were fed. He placed them vertically (he planted - hence the name) either in one row (ears up or alternately), or in two (bottom - ears up, the next - on the contrary, ears down).
A window was cut down in a log house, through it they entered the premises and supplied the sheaves themselves.
Another window was cut down below the bottom of the structure for drying sheaves; grains and garbage were scooped out through it.
The drying process usually took one night.
Where were the territorial sheep
Due to the high fire hazard, they were equipped outside the peasant households, away from farm buildings, most often on the threshing floor.
Peasant communities quite often built one barn for several families. Well-off peasants could build them a few and rent them out to the poor, receiving payment for this either in sheaves or in the services provided.
For peasants at the beginning of the twentieth century it was completely clear what a barn is. This concept became an outdated word by the middle of the century - after the October Revolution in Russia in agriculture there was no manual threshing left.