Due to the unstable climate throughout Tsarist Russia, the peasants had a need to dry the sheaves harvested from the field. This applied to both flax and cereals. For this purpose, the peasants built a barn. What is it, how is it arranged? Unfortunately, at the moment, not even 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 recognizable 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 if the ear was dry (wet ears were not completely threshed).
Humid air in late summer and early autumn did not allow to keep the harvested crop dry. The sheaves were taken to a special wooden barn - a barn. The names could be different, depending on the territorial affiliation: shish - a lightweight building in Russian villages, yovnya - among Belarusians, dry land - in Ukraine.
Sheaves were placed vertically, and bred from belowfire, with the heat of which the ears were dried.
According to ancient beliefs, a magical creature lives in a barn - a barn, without it the fire burns incorrectly, and the sheaves do not dry.
Lower barn room: what it is and how it works inside
Wooden barn - bunk room. First, the 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 reinforced with logs, folded either horizontally or vertically.
With very wet soils (in the northern regions), they did not dig a hole, the lower tier was built either on the ground (upper barn), or half dug (half-upper).
Sadilo - the second tier of the barn: what kind of room is this? How does it work?
A tall wooden shed was erected above the hearth (it could be a log house, wattle, less often adobe) a little smaller than a pit. Above the remaining part, a prirub was built (its height was less than the main log house) to enter the podovin.
The wall that was between the main room and the prirub did not reach the ground - this gap served as an entrance to the pit, then there was a stairway.
The floor was laid tightly from thick boards or slabs. Slots were organized between it and the walls - sinuses (up to forty centimeters wide), they served to transmit heat and smoke from the hearth.
At a low height (from ten to twelve centimeters), boards (shelves) wide in the sinuses (or a little more) were inserted into the walls of the log house. They covered the cracks from above, preventingfail the grain down and not missing the sparks from below.
A thick (up to twenty centimeters) layer of earth or clay was laid out on the floor - this is under.
Above the hearth at a height of about a meter there were grates - long (from wall to wall) poles laid at a short distance from each other (no more than twenty centimeters). Their loose ends were laid on two beams (or logs) cut into the walls. This made it possible to simply move the poles against the wall when cleaning after drying.
As a rule, the ceiling was not fixed in the barn, there was only a roof covered with straw. Smoke easily passed through it, and the straw itself did not rot due to smoking and served for a long time.
How the sheaves dried in the 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 hearth) a fire was made from special logs (barns) up to one and a half meters long. This was done by experienced peasants, since the process itself depended on how the firewood would burn (how even the heat would be and without an extra jumping flame).
The second peasant climbed into the garden through the window, sheaves were served to him. He put them vertically (planted - hence the name) either in one row (ears up or alternately), or in two (the lower one - with ears up, the next - on the contrary, ears down).
A window was cut down in the log house, through which they entered the premises and fed the sheaves themselves.
Bottom above the hearthbuildings for drying sheaves, another window was cut down, crumbling grains and garbage were raked through it.
The drying process usually took one night.
Where the barns were located territorially
Due to the high fire hazard, they were equipped outside the peasant households, away from outbuildings, most often on the threshing floor.
Peasant communities quite often built one barn for several families. We althy peasants could build several of them and rent them out to the poor, receiving payment for this either in sheaves or in services rendered.
For peasants at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was completely clear what a barn was. This concept became obsolete by the middle of the century - after the October Revolution, there was no manual threshing in agriculture in Russia.
