ASHLEY - Scottie Schlepp does not resemble the plump golden chickens in his yard. He isn't scared to stick his neck out.

He doesn't follow the fold like his fuzzy white sheep do, either.

It's like he told the first-ever audience assembled in the hayloft of his 100-year-old barn Thursday night.

"This might be the craziest idea I ever had, and it's probably going to work," he said.

The line got a hoot of laughter, because people from Ashley, they know Schlepp.

"Leave it to Scottie. I've known him since he was a baby," said Lillian Schauer. She and her husband, Edwin, dressed up for the occasion, she in pink and aqua, he in a pair of creased shorts.

They gamely made their way through the barn door and climbed rough plank steps up to The Hayloft, where a small cast performed a one-act western comedy, the first of three plays planned through next spring.

This weekend's performance of "The Killest" is sold out. The Schlepps quit answering their phone days ago.

The audience, young and old and nearly all from McIntosh County, sat on 60 white plastic patio chairs lined up in rows. Wagon wheels wired for chandeliers and the high arching ribs of the old barn rafters provided authentic ambience. The director, also the town veterinarian, pulled the jangling, shower-like stage curtain by hand.

Scottie and his lovely Ermaline - her job as wife is a lot like keeping a rope lassoed to a whirlwind - are having fun out on their farm.

It's busy in the yard, and the stage lights are on out in the barn until well past dark. Like the barn's milking days gone by, only more entertaining.

"This is different," Ermaline Schlepp said.

The Schlepps owned Scott's Restaurant in Ashley for many years. They liked the folks - but the work, oh, the work.

"I do miss the people," Scottie Schlepp said.

Converting the old barn into a performance center was a piece of his wife's kuchen, in comparison. He'd been thinking about the idea for a couple of years and found investors to chip in $500 each. He could use more investors, because the barn roof needs shingling.

The loft is available for other events, like all the dancing, toasting and mock wedding fun at a recent 25th anniversary.

For the first play, Scott Schlepp said he told director Reese Myran he had three criteria: short, funny and western.

Myran, besides caring for animals, directed the school's high school play last year. He said finding a script was the easy part.

The hard part was arm-twisting people into taking a part in the play.

It's a busy time of year, with the hay ripe now and crops nearly so. And besides, people already have a routine, and shaking them loose from it takes effort.

"It's too easy to be entertained by TV," Myran said.

Angie Gilstad, of Ashley, was never in a play before, but she took the part of Miss Emily, the town sheriff's right-hand gal. Her costume provided her a reason to wear the lace-up pointy-toed boots she was married in.

"Reese sounded desperate," she said. It's been fun and no real hardship, with rehearsals later on after she put her kids to bed, she said.

And it's pretty out at the Schlepps' farm, four miles north of Ashley and east at the threshing machine. There's a lush garden in the yard, Ermaline Schlepp's flowers all around and a pair of matched bay draft horses with this year's colt down by the slough.

Nancy Lippert, of Ashley, was in the audience with her longtime high school friend, who's now of Florida.

She was looking forward to seeing a play in a hayloft.

After all, it's a concept that would only occur to a guy like Scottie Schlepp, who quit moving around long enough to pour his actors a shot of Apple Pie wedding whiskey to calm their pre-performance jitters.

"It's a great idea," Lippert said.

Turned out, it was.