The barn was built around a century ago. A pair of double doors on the front flapped when the wind blew, and a short service door was on the side. It wasn’t a big barn, about 30 feet wide by 40 feet long with a small hay mow above. It had a couple of windows for light, and of course a window in the peak. There was a hitching rail outside that gave it a certain welcoming charm. A charm that seemed to say, “tie up to the rail, and c’mon in.”

Thousands of horses lose their lives every year trapped in barns that people cannot get to. Insurance often doesn’t cover the entire cost. And insurance buys things but doesn’t replace that special animal lost forever. Champion Thoroughbreds like Favorite Trick and Saratoga Six lost their lives as well as 43 head of Thoroughbreds and Quarter horses, most just two year olds, killed in February 2006 in a fire at Eureka Downs in Eureka, Kansas.

Here it was like a beehive with too many fuzzy cheeked teen-agers who couldn’t possibly be experienced enough to be of much help. But work was being accomplished; bents, end walls and partitions were being assembled like magic and raised into place with well-coordinated, effortless ease and precision. No tempers were flaring, no egomaniacs were trying to steal the show, and there was not the usual ten percent doing ninety percent of the work.

In the crisp mountain air, the horses seem to glide through the timber, side-stepping small trees and fallen logs. The chainsaw roars devastation, but the mighty pines float to the ground as they fall. These are the dead and dying, those that have been singed by fire, invaded by the beetle or abandoned by the rain and snow. The limbs fall to the forest floor as mulch, and the stripped trunk leaves its birthplace. The horses snort and bow their heads as the men call out short and simple commands through the sawdust fog. But the horses know what to do as they feel and guide the load, drawing on the generations of toil and experience of their forebears.

One of the most striking aspects of this development is the strength and confidence that comes from this communal way of living. While it is impressive to build a barn in a day it seems even more impressive to imagine building four barns or six, and all the rest of the needs of a community. For these young Amish families the vision of a shared agricultural community is strong, and clear.

Barn Layout • Sheep Shed • Hay Self-Feeder • Open-Air Shed

This is the season of the year when many of the farm machines and implements are put away until next spring. All of the machines and implements should be given a thorough cleaning and stored under cover where they will be protected from the rain and snow, which do much to shorten the life and increase the cost of farm machinery. An implement shed and farm shop that will pay big dividends during the life of the farm machinery is shown in the illustration. Here is space for open storage of wagons and other farm equipment, a garage for the car or tractor and a shop where the repairs that the machinery will need before being put in use next spring may be made.

A general barn plan showing floor plan layout and an elevation view. Also a pedal-powered crosscut saw.

Hay Barns & Sheds and Corn Shellers

Hay Doors for Gable End of Barn

A good many farmers are coming around to the idea that it pays to invest a little bit more in a building at the start so as to get away from the upkeep expense later on. They are turning to clay tile more and more. The building material dealers and the rural builders are lining up with the farmers on this proposition. The lumber dealers are carrying in stock a line of all the commonly used sizes, and the builders are finding out that it is no trick at all to lay up a tile wall and make a good job of it.

First you must decide what size of building you want, 28 – 48 feet wide and a length that is in 6 foot increments. The rafters are placed on 6 foot centers, with 2” x 4” purlins and steel siding/roofing. Let’s work with a forty foot wide foundation, easy to figure. The rafters are built out of 8 foot 1” x 8” boards. The number of 1x8s can be figured out by using the circumference. For a 40 foot wide building, figure a 40 foot diameter circle, which is 125.6 feet in circumference. Half of this circle would give you one layer of a rafter. So about 63 feet of 1×8 multiplied by 4 (because each rafter is composed of 4 layers). Each rafter then would use thirty-two 8 foot 1x8s. The end rafters really only need three layers.

By the late 1970s, Davis Farm was sailing along serenely, but a seed of discontent had begun to grow in Jerome. His main dairy barn, aesthetically attractive as it was, was not especially efficient. There were too many, too short, rows of stalls, the stalls were a bit small for the contemporary, larger Holsteins, and some of the stalls were even still wood floored, a situation not favored by the milk inspectors. This also made it difficult to install gutter cleaners, pipeline milkers and other labor saving equipment. Chores were involving too much labor or too much time or both. In brief, Jerome was ready for the major investment in a new barn.

When we see an old barn that has fallen into ruin or that has been torn down to put up a new pole barn or other building, it just about breaks our hearts. So when we started talking about what kind of buildings we wanted on our twenty-three acres (there were none) my husband, Brian, and I decided we wanted to try to find an old post and beam barn to dismantle and rebuild instead of a pricey, new-fangled pole barn which we couldn’t afford.

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 […]

A small combination type barn with the accommodations for two horses, eight cows and several calves. Picture shows a view of the end where calf pens are located. Concrete wall is carried 2′ above grade, balance being frame construction with 6″ drop siding. Roof is of cedar or composition shingles. Working plans show the installation of a gravity type ventilating system.

In our archives, we have a big Starline plan book with detailed engineer’s drawings of what were once popular and dreamed of dairy barns. These designs represent an apex of the era of mixed crop and livestock farming, a system which frequently centered on a milking herd of a dozen to four dozen cows, a handful of beef cattle, some hogs, chickens and perhaps even sheep. Across the upper latitudes of the U.S. and all of Canada, these massive barns provided ample space for hay and grain storage along with winter quarters for livestock.

There are 6 stanchions: first Juliette, named for the great grandma of all modern herbalists, Juliette de Bairacli Levy. Number Two cow is Masha, our best milker, best disposition, glorious teats and not an ungraceful line on her entire being. All the animals here were born on the farm with the exception of Nell, the next cow on the stanchion floor. She is Juliette’s mother. Hazel is in the other big stall across from the heifer stall. She’s dry now and 7 months pregnant, and I’m keeping her apart because she will eat too much if she is in with the milkers.

Warm barns make for cheery farmers but they are not so good for the animals. Furry farm creatures, especially ruminants, are suited by their natures for temperatures far lower than man finds comfortable. As has been observed widely, farm animals, given the choice, will often spend their time out of doors even at very low temperatures in winter. Animal shelters need only prevent the occupants from being exposed to draft and humidity, for it is these and not the cold, that lead to winter diseases in bird and beast.