Another one bites the dust

springvalley · #1 09/14/12, 08:33 AM

So sad indeed, we have lost two barns on our road in the last week. Young man that is now farming part of his great grandfathers ground, it was left in a trust. They have been buying parts of the land from the trust, and he bought one of the homesteads at the end of our road. it had an old barn on it that was not in to bad of shape, and GGdad spent a bunch of money on at one time. But he had no use for it, so it came down with the help of a big excavator last week. Then last night when I went to town, his fathers place just down the road from me a 1/2 mile had the old barn down and burning. I just hate to see the barns leaving the landscape of todays farming. But I guess tearing them down is better than them falling down. So, so sad indeed, history gone forever. > Thanks Marc

G. Seddon · #2 09/14/12, 09:05 AM

Perhaps they will build a new one on the property? One can always hope.

oregon woodsmok · #3 09/14/12, 01:21 PM

That is sad.

The land directly under that barn can't possibly produce that many pounds of crop to justify tearing the barn down.

springvalley · #4 09/14/12, 11:12 PM

I have heard rumors that his plans are to put up a hoop building, he has stock cows and feeds out the calves on another farm. So a hoop building would work good for him, just hate to see the barns go. > Thanks Marc

Wilbur · #5 09/19/12, 03:30 PM

A friend of mine makes furniture out of old barns like that that are beyond repair. Each piece gets a certificate with some of the history of where the wood came from. While I love the look of old barns I also recognize that its not my barn and if trying to save some old structure puts someone out of business that doesn't help either (not suggesting that would or would not have happened in the case you cited but for some (many?) that is the thin line being walked.) Ultimately I would rather the barn get torn down and the business (farm) saved then have the person try to save the barn, fail and then have the farm developed or something worse.

Of course all that said....old barns are really beautiful and its sad to see them go!

wvdexters · #6 09/19/12, 04:04 PM

Yes, they are disappearing everywhere. It is sad. My Dad worked hard to save the old barn on our property. It was in pretty bad shape when we bought the place. New roof, floor, and had to repair the supports underneath. Took the whole summer a few years back. It was a lot of work but it was worth it though. Really makes the farm. It is too bad people don't slow down and see the beauty in the old buildings, they are history.

We don't know how old the barn actually is. It is original to the farm one of the oldest in the area. The old-timers tell us of all the good times they had playing in it when they were children. They were glad we saved it. It is still in use and should last another 50 yrs. now. Dad laughs and says now it is up to our son to keep it.

Bambitski · #7 09/20/12, 07:30 AM

It is so sad that people want the newer and better. I understand that it is sometimes more cost effective to put up a newer one, but boy do I wish I had one of the older ones myself. I would love to have one of them. They were built with the intent of housing all of your animals in one area. Now, we have an area for the cows, an area for male goats, an area for female goats, an area for poultry, and an area for the pigs when we raise them. Plus, I plan to have a couple of sheep in the future and will have to have an area for them. LOL

Callieslamb · #8 09/20/12, 07:54 AM

I love the older barns. I especially love the banked barns they have here. I can see that they aren't as practical as they used to be and who could afford to put a wooden one up these days, let alone the upkeep on them? I'm sure if these barns had been in usable condition they would have been more likely to have been left alone. I see ones here that are ready to fall in. I worry for the animals that live around them. They can't live in them- the offer absolutely no protection from the weather.

I'm even seeing the pole barns going away in favor of the hoop barns. I think that's sad too.

springvalley · #9 09/20/12, 08:31 AM

Barns are just like anything else, if you keep them up a bit at a time, and do general repairs on them from time to time, they don`t cost that much to keep up and in good shape. But if you forget about them, and don`t have the money to put in them , yes they are going to fall apart quickly. The barns that I wrote about on here could have been saved, they just chose not to. The one barn would have been hard to refit to have a good use to it, but the second barn could very well have been turned into something usefull. Around here it is more of a class system, if you fix up the old stuff your nuts, crazy or tight. But if you tear one down and put up a new shed, you are thought of to be looking to the future, open minded and such. I caught a lot of flack from a couple neighbors a few years ago for spending so much money on "That old barn". I heard, why don`t you tear it down and put up a new shed? There are a few around here that fix up their barns, but there are more being torn down than are being saved. > Thanks Marc

FarmerDavid · #10 09/20/12, 09:18 AM

I say this as someone who loves the old barns and argues with my dad constantely about saving ours. The old barns arent functional with the way things are done today. Weve got ideas on things that we can do to make ours functional, but its cost prohibitive. Dads needs repainting but he wont put the money in it, so im fearfull it might rot away. Mine needs a new roof and id like to add a lean to on the east side. Hopefully thatll happen in the spring.

AverageJo · #11 09/20/12, 10:29 AM

Although I hate to see the old barns torn down, I do see why they do it. Our barn is beautiful and I love seeing it. I love having the hay in the loft that we can just drop below for the animals. Two floors means half the footprint on the soil and less hauling. But, that being said, we still do things the old fashioned way. Bigger farmers have bigger equipment and want to use that equipment! We can't even get a skidloader into our barn and clean it out effectively. Big farms are going to want to use their big equipment and don't want to have to work around support beams and low ceilings. They are not likely to use a shovel or scraper to push the manuer of their animals into the gutter and then operate a gutter cleaner/conveyor to move the manuer out of the barn into a spreader. They want to get an endloader in there and scoop it into a big truck or some such. I'm sure they also use large round bales instead of small squares and you can't put large rounds into the hay loft. If you want to store them inside, you have to stack them using tractors or other impliments that can lift them.
The neighbor down the road that has torn down the two barns uses this big equipment so, in reality, the barns wouldn't have worked for his operation. Plain and simple, it was ground being wasted.

WJMartin · #12 09/20/12, 12:15 PM

BIL bought an old place up in central Kanasas that I loved the limestone barns, unfortunatly they were in bad shape when they bought the place and found out it would cost a fortune to have them fixed up. They have since fallen in, so sad. The large one was so neat built into a bank so the animals were kept warm with dirt on 3 sides and a large open milking space on the top "ground level" .

springvalley · #13 09/20/12, 01:47 PM

We had at one time several interesting barns in our neighborhood, we had a round barn, and a three story barn. The round barn was "round" perfectly, and had a silo in the center. It was a dairy barn and the cows stood in a circle around the silo, it was cool. And just down the road from our place was the three story barn, it was a modified bank barn. It had the dairy cows in the basement, then the horses were over them on the next floor, them the hay loft was on the thrird floor. What was really cool was the hay loft area had a drive in area, so can you figure out how tall of a hill it was next to. The approach for the third floor is still there and the new owners have painted a mural on it. A big American flag, that is very cool. We also have a barn a few miles away that was built in such a way that you never had to go outside once you went to the barn in the winter. The barn, hog house, corn crib, grainary were all contected or built over top of one or the other. It is one of the coolest barns I have seen, made doing chore easy in the winter time, but would have been a big problem if you had a fire. Can you see I LOVE barns. There are also some real cool small barns also. Ones that had maybe a team of horses and a cow and a buggy horse. > Thanks Marc