On The Farm: Barn Again!

By J D. Reed.

Historians have long considered the 1908 livestock feeding barn of the Manchester family in New Hampshire, Ohio, to be one of the finest examples of a round barn in the Midwest. That was nice, but until recently, the barn was nearly useless for modern grain farming. Like most old barns, it contained stalls for livestock and horses -- the preindustrial tractors of agriculture -- and a cavernous hayloft for storing their fuel. Over time, the outmoded barn weathered and withered. But during the past 15 years, to avoid new construction costs, the Manchesters have braced the old roof, installed modern seed-conditioning machinery inside, applied a coat of white paint and given the barn a new working life.

Like the Manchesters' building, hundreds of old barns across the U.S. have lately been remodeled and put back to work, many of them thanks to a program jointly sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Successful Farming magazine. The program's name: Barn Again! The sponsors offer farmers advice on refurbishing barns, and have presented prizes of up to $1,000 for the best examples. "But they're not just stage sets," says Barn Again! project director Mary Humstone. "They have to have a living, practical use."

The big buildings blend form and function in a uniquely American design vernacular. "The family farm is a reflection of one of our last great freedoms in America," says Chester Liebs, director of the University of Vermont's historic preservation program. "The barn is the rural equivalent of the Statue of Liberty. Each time we see a barn, it is a powerful reminder that our agricultural lands are still in the hands of the many." Kerry Dawson, professor of landscape architecture at the University of California at Davis, describes barns as "superb building technology," but adds, "As you look upward, the timbers and rafters are almost cathedral-like."

That sense is enhanced in most barn restorations. "Bigger is the whole concept," says Michigan renovation expert David Ciolek, who has rehabbed hundreds of barns around the country. Ciolek creates higher, longer open spaces by a process called trussing. First he rearranges the old post-and-beam construction, then transfers the weight of the roof and hayloft to the outside walls by means of triangular wooden supports. Says Illinois livestock farmer Janis King, who had Ciolek fix up an 1870 barn: "Unless lightning strikes, the barn will be here another 100 years."

Renovation is usually cheaper than a new barn, and fixing up a historic structure can earn an investment tax credit as well. Barn Again! contest winners have spent an average of $11,000 on their projects, compared with a $25,000-to-$35,000 cost for a new metal building. There are exceptions, though: the Taylor family's handsome horse barn in Orange, Va., built in 1933 from a Sears, Roebuck mail-order-catalog kit, cost $39,000 to restore to its former efficiency.

For some, more heartfelt reasons than money are at stake. When Stockton, Ill., dairy farmer Stewart Schlafer, 41, was a teenager, he pleaded in vain with his father to tear down the family's 1876 barn and build a new one. Now, age and memories have convinced Schlafer that he should keep and improve his Gothic-style beauty. The barn, he says, "is the character and soul of our farm."

Some barns never lose their cantankerous old souls. Wilder Kimball, 81, a Rumford Center, Me., cattle farmer, has kept his 1897 gable-roofed barn fit enough to grace a seed-company calendar. He shelters 45 head of Herefords inside the pine-walled building, and the old-fashioned lightning rods with glass balls on top still function. Kimball doesn't even go to the hardware store for paint. He gets iron-oxide powder from a local mine and mixes it with linseed oil to make his barn red. With that kind of Yankee ingenuity, he may never have to sell the farm.

With reporting by Val Castronovo/New York and Elizabeth Taylor/Chicago