A Barn Yarn

A Gothic barn in Oregon

If you have a farm, you need a barn.
Right?

If you start a farm from scratch, on bare land that hasn't truly been worked for decades, you still need a barn.
Right?

Right!

Barns are key infrastructure on a farm. They are shelter for animals, storage for hay and equipment, and places to do projects.  Barns are often the architectural star of a farm- frequently outshining even the ubiquitous farmhouse in form and function.

There are as many types of barns as there are regions of the world. In western culture, there are primitive barns, gambol roof barns and Gothic barns as well as pole barns, bank barns, long barns and round barns. Any of these barn styles would have been good for most American farms. However, as technologies advanced and new methods were developed, farmers were able to make more specific choices as to the type of barn they wanted to use in their operation. The geographic regional location of the farm as well as the types of crops raised played a major role in the style of barn chosen. For instance, a farmer that raised tobacco in the relative snow-free zone of the American Southeast would need a less structurally hardy barn, but with higher eves in which to hang the tobacco for curing. Those farms in the cold and snowy Northern tier needed a structurally strong building with large, open spaces for hay storage to feed the many dairy and beef cattle for that region's agricultural traditions.

An example of a gambol roof barn

On Winterrest Farm, we'll need a couple of different types of barns. The first barn we built as a "cold-storage building", meant to store equipment, tools and overflow house-hold goods during the move from North Carolina to New York. This barn is what is known as a "pole barn", and consists only of 8"x8" square poles driven into the ground, walls and roof built around them and a concrete floor poured. There are two standard bay doors at one end, and a service door on the side. Bare bones.


The second will be a larger barn, similar to the first, but longer and insulated in parts. The larger barn will store heavy equipment and house the main workshop. At the opposite end a small 4-stall stable will be fitted for horses and a corral area for goats will be built. The original "cold storage building" will be used exclusively to store hay for the horses and the beef steers.

In case you ever build your own farm, or take over an existing one, never store your hay and equipment in the same building. Ever. No matter how well it's made, hay can ignite spontaneously and if your expensive equipment is caught up in the conflagration, it could go from sad and unfortunate to disastrous.

We worked with a local man- born and raised in the Kayahoora Valley- to build Winterrest Farm's first barn. Most of these pictures were taken by him as he built the structure.




As our barn was raised, my spirits went with it. This fledgling farm, probably laughable to larger American Agribusiness operations, had it's first official structure. It will go with us into the future, holding items that are precious to us and to the sustainability of the farm. It will provide shade on recreation days and a place to shelter out of the rain when the sudden thunderstorms rise up from the western mountains and loom over the valley. It will sit quietly on it's sloped meadow and do it's job, watching...and being watched by those who care for it.



I love my barn, and it loves me.