Below is a short piece from Starting Your Farm, by SFJ editor and publisher Lynn R. Miller. Click the links below to see Chapter One of Starting Your Farm and to view the book in our online bookstore.

“You may have purchased a farm with a fantastic set of old barns and sheds. You, on the other hand may have purchased raw land with no buildings. Or, somewhere in between you may have land with dilapidated or poor buildings. Any of these situations will require a different attitude combined with your specific operational concerns. I once owned a 77 acre dairy farm with a huge loafing shed, a covered silage bunker, a cinder block milking parlor, and an old original multi-purpose barn in the center. My own farming consisted of a milk cow, feeder pigs, draft horses, chickens, 14 acres of market garden and the balance in hay- grain and pasture. That was more than twenty years and three farms ago but I still remember and am glad that I resisted all temptation to remove any of those buildings. I never made full use of them but others since my departure have. I once lived on a twelve acre farm my parents owned and the only buildings were a 12’x14′ one room cabin and a small barn. On that place I learned the value of every square foot of shed space.”

“In this chapter I am offering some old, favorite building plans for simple sheds and barns. Please accept these as they are meant, simply as a beginning suggestion to get the design juices flowing. If you are practicing necessary frugality you will need to build with the materials you can find, barter for, or afford and those materials will suggest certain design possibilities and limitations. For example, if you have lots of free poles or rock, use the stuff. If you have been given a metal clad building if you take it down, use the stuff. You might have some available materials which you find unpleasant to look at, find a way to make them passable or even beautiful and use the stuff.”

Read More:
Starting Your Farm: Chapter One
Starting Your Farm In Bookstore