Barn Raising

by Ida Livingston of Davis City, IA

My neighbor has been building a timber framed home and enlisted the aid of a couple of young Amish men to help with the finish work. Enos J Troyer and his brothers Christ and Menno have proven themselves expert carpenters. We learned that Enos had a new project, he was the foreman for an upcoming barn raising at Sam Yoder’s, just on the other side of the Iowa/Missouri border.

One afternoon in early June, I drove a few miles over to see Sam Yoder and ask if he objected to me chronicling the process in an article. I knew there would be concern about how to photograph it, as conservative Amish and Mennonite do not wish to have their people photographed. I told Sam that I was confident that I could find ways to photograph the process without people in the pictures. With this consideration he had no objection to documenting the event.

Sam said it had been 9 years since they’d had a barn raising in their local Amish settlement. He had considered just putting up a simpler pole barn. It would have cost less but not met their needs nearly as well. It is nice to have a bank barn where you can stall the animals in the warm, sheltered lower level.

This barn had stalls for the horses and milk cows both. Sam enjoys keeping a few milk cows so the milking parlor is set up for six cows. There are leans on the barn for housing equipment out of the weather. An earthen bank rises to meet the second floor so that a hay wagon can drive up and into the hay mow.

Materials were bought in advance of the work and the project planning was well organized so the bank barn could go up as quickly as possible. A project like this can make the wallet bleed freely, as there is no income to staunch its flow while taking time off to put it up. It took just over a month to get it up and under roof – not done; there was finish work left, but it was up and dry.

Prep Work

On May 16th, Sam “put his hand to the plow” and began tearing down an old pole barn that they had been making do with, but it sat in the best location for the new barn. Once down and out of the way, they began digging out and leveling the site against a small pre-existing bank. The land lay well here and did not require an excessive amount of digging. Both a slip and a tumble bug were used to excavate the site.

Once leveled and the bank carved out some, they dug the drains and the footers. When the foundation was poured, the block walls were ready to go up. Over 3,500 cement blocks were laid to make the first floor walls. The basement is 4,712 ft. In advance of the project, Sam rented a small sawmill and for .15/board foot he sawed quite a bit of ash lumber in hopes of helping keep the expenses down.

June 12th

A small frolic was scheduled for June 12th to lay the upstairs barn floor in advance of the big raising day. There were several families in attendance. While men worked out on the barn, the ladies in the house were prepping the quilts that would be put in the frame the next week. They were already stitched, they just had to have designs marked in chalk to guide the quilters hand for stitching.

June 18th

In the days preceding the big barn raising, the Iowa/Missouri border was getting several inches of rain and some high wind. I worried about the upcoming event as the rain poured heavily. Almost more concerning was the high wind we had all day long on the 17th. By the next morning, however, it had blown itself out and June 18th opened up as a sunny, still day.

A steady stream of both Amish and local guests arrived through the morning. Work began around 7:00 a.m. Spectators set up lawn chairs and the Amish headed for the barn. Sam Yoder and his family are Swartzentruber Amish but everyone loves a good frolic, especially in the event of a barn raising, so I noticed there was more than one order of Amish attending.

The outer barn walls were framed up and the siding nailed on. This makes it much easier and safer to cover those outside walls. However, Sam was worried that the walls might be too heavy to lift if covered, so he did not have the nails pounded in all the way. This way, if they decided it was too heavy then they would pull the boards off before raising the walls.

A substantial crew showed up. One number I heard was 80 men, if that was the final count I am not sure. Anyway, they decided to raise the first wall covered to see how it goes, so the men stepped out on the laid walls and pounded the nails all the way in. All the rain we’d had created a significant amount of mud, which was then tracked on the walls as the nails were pounded in.

The men assembled themselves and at Enos’s call to raise, the wall was lifted. When it rose as high as a man could lift, the spike poles were set to stab into the wood enough to catch and then lift it further. At the same time there were ropes tied to these walls and held by some of the men to steady the walls so that they wouldn’t overbalance and fall over backwards.

Once the wall was upright, a couple young men quickly climbed up the sides of the wall to begin nailing the bracing that would stabilize the wall. Once this was done, the ropes could come down and the spike poles were carefully lowered. They had enough men to raise the wall without too much difficulty, so they moved on to the next.

Meanwhile in the house, buckets of potatoes were being peeled and meal preparations were well underway. Men are not the only ones who go to a barn raising. It is a social day for the women as well. With plenty of help in the kitchen, the overflow moved into the living room where two quilts waited to be hand quilted. I had brought my thimble as I enjoy quilting, and when the potatoes were peeled, I settled down to do some stitching.

By lunch, the walls were up and the roof almost ready for tin. The woodworking shop across the driveway had been cleared out and cleaned. Long lines of tables were set up and laid with dishware for a sit down meal. The men were seated and served so they could resume with the task at hand at the close of the meal. Once the men headed back to the barn the tables were reloaded for the women and children.

To photograph the process, I would show up while Sam’s family was eating lunch to take pictures. This way they didn’t have to stop working and move to avoid the camera. On the raising day, I was able to photograph the process while the workers ate lunch as well.

By mid-afternoon, the rafters were all in place and tin was going up on the roof. By the close of the day, the walls were up and the roof was on. The finish work was by no means done. The bank wall had to have the drains finished and the bank filled in against the barn. The sliding doors had to be assembled and hung. The stalls downstairs needed to be finished. But these details were all in the scope of what Sam, his four assisting sons and if he chose to continue hiring Enos and Christ to help, could accomplish.

Throughout the barn raising, the foreman, Enos Troyer, was extremely busy directing the men. He was easy to spot because he carried a 6 ft level with him at all times as he made sure everything was nailed and square. Enos drew out the blueprints, oversaw and helped with almost all the prep work for this barn, and then of course directed the crew that raised it. The incredible part is the fact that Enos was only 20 years old. That barn went up and fit together like it was supposed to with only a couple minor adjustments. I imagine this is not the last barn he will raise.

A Hidden But Welcome Cost

In the weeks preceding the big raising there were a couple small frolics, there were also two young men hired to help and then often Amish guests who came to volunteer their time to help with the prep work. All of these were hosted by Sam Yoder’s family for meals. His wife said she had anticipated that hosting all the people who helped with the barn would be the equivalent of a wedding meal. She soon realized, however, it was much more than that. A wedding is a one day event, this barn raising hosted people over the course of several weeks, some days more, some days less. Yet serving meals to those volunteering their time is well worth the help received in return.

Other Raising Days

In conversations I’ve had with people about barns this summer, I’ve enjoyed hearing the stories of other barn raisings people have been to. When my father was young, many of the bank barns were still built timber-frame style. These are now quite rare to be built new. He told how in his youth there was an Amish barn foreman who was known to do a handstand on the peak of the roof at the end of a barn raising day.

Sam and his family were very fortunate to have the weather clear for their barn raising. I heard someone tell of a barn raising in Kentucky that landed on a very rainy day. They would just have postponed the raising but they had a large van load of out-of-state guests who had arrived to attend and participate. They would not easily be able to reschedule. So they conferred and decided to go on with it and raise the barn while working in the pouring rain.

Sam Yoder was wise in considering the weight of the walls. My father told of a raising once where they did not have enough men to fully raise a wall. This is extremely dangerous. They ended up having, on the count of three to bolt out of the way and let it drop. This busted the wall but no one was hurt. Another case I heard of at a barn raising, a partially raised wall was too heavy for the men to lift, so the women came out of the house to help and this was just enough to lift the wall in place.

A Heritage Livestock Barn

Bank barns are a style commonly used by Amish who raise a lot of livestock in the north. With land prices what they are these days, fewer Amish are solely reliant upon farming for an income than there used to be. New farms do not have these barns go up as often as they used to.

Sam had hoped to raise the barn for about $30,000 less than what it ended up costing. He had done his homework and bought materials at the best prices he could find, sawed some of his own lumber, but it still cost over $70,000. In the end though, his farm has a barn that meets their needs and will serve generations. That is worth more than just money.

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