Old World Barns

R

Rshel

New Member
I know that I drive people crazy always talking about it but....I don't care. Today the hot thing is recycling, upcycling, repurposing, and whatever cute little word you want to label it. Old world barns are being torn down at an alarming rate. Incredible craftsmanship has allowed these barns to survive for a 150 to 200 years.
In my time working in, on, and around barns I’ve grown to love finding initials carved in the structure itself by the children growing up on that farm at the turn of the century. The incredible mortise and tenon joinery of the 150 year old wood makes everyone who sees it stop and stare. Every kid, including myself and my brother always loved the amazing feeling you get just playing in the barn.
Farmers can rarely afford the incredible cost associated with the maintenance and/ or restorations. Once the barns have reached a state of decay that insurance companies feel are no longer insurable the barn becomes a liability. The only thing they feel left to do is to take it down. More often than not, the barn is simply knocked down and burned.
Everyone familiar with old world barns are very aware of how quickly they’re being torn down and the threat of them disappearing from the landscape within our lifetimes.
We need to take action now to save the barns of America. While farmers are struggling to save their farms, we can step in to help save their barns, not just for them but for us all. This is not a one time thing, it’s a movement to save something that is worth saving.

It is important to save something beautiful....many things created today are so generic and just ugly.
 

The grand old American barn is a thing to be envied here in OZ.
Weather didn't necessitate much more than corner sticks with a corrugated iron roof and we never invested much effort into them at all.
I agree, you should treasure yours.

This is typical of the majority of old barns down here. We leave them to the termites and rust without much regret.

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Life revolved around the big old barn on the farm when I was growing up... I loved playing in the barn as a kid.
..have some wonderful memories...
the farm cats gathering around the cows at milking time ... the family Halloween parties, like when my two uncles were swamees and then another time, 'the world's tallest fly swatters', ..gathering bags of walnuts I picked and heading up into the hay loft to hide out for the afternoon.. It was a special place with lot of good times.



http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/crops_07.html
 
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TWHRider said:
You continue to talk about barns, while I continue to talk about horses and we will just drive the entire suburban and city lot of folks bonkers:playful:
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... as it goes.. " you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl" :wiggle:

(even in a concrete jungle)
 
I see a lot of ads that will say "free barn to be moved". If only it were that easy! Some of them are lovely but like the ones in the pictures, are really old and would have to be taken apart and put back together. I'd be willing to do that if I had the right gear and a big truck. I'll keep looking and if the right one comes my way, I'll certainly look into it more.

Ahhhhhh, my kingdom for a barn.......
 
TWHRider said:
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Oddly, my mom was the complete opposite. She was born/raised on a big dairy farm and was never content until she moved into a sub-division. I suppose it was her way of getting away from everything that represented poor to her. She was never about "showing out" but was more about the personal satisfaction of being able to buy things that had the word "elegant' attached to them instead of "it needs to serve a purpose". She used to wax the garage floor and put cardboard under the oil pan in case it got the drips:sentimental: Oh yes, mummy dearest knew what and where the oil pan was located - she was Dumb Like a Fox, so she was:wink:

I like nice things but not too nice and they do need to serve a purpose --- multi-tasking things are even better - lol lol lol
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Similar thing here. My Mum was a city girl raised in the country, and I was a country girl raised in the city.
It got confusin'.
 
I love the old barns, and would love to investigate them, but know that they become havens to critters - rats, snakes, spiders; etc. It is sad to see them fall apart and be taken down, but how many small farms have money to renovate them anymore....not many. They are just one of the pieces of times gone by that will have to be enjoyed in coffee table books and old pictures. :(
 
I grew up mostly in the country at a time when many families had a farm, big and small. We had a few animals and two small barns. The first barn my folks tore down was put together with wooden pegs and few nails. We all had a lot of laughs watching the menfolk trying to get it to fall down. It just wouldn't budge. Soon, the saws came out, and the barn was history.

The second barn, my favorite playing place, had to come down to make room for my grandparents house they were building. It was a sad day for me as I had so many memories in that barn, including falling down the hay shaft and damn near breaking my neck.

Just along my stretch of road there were many beautiful barns and today, they are all gone. Take a ride in the country sometime and see what I mean. Silos falling down, roofs caving in and very few active farms anymore.
 
Is that a tree growing IN the barn?

I'm citified now--suburban girl moved into Philly 22 years ago (but people laugh at me, because, apparently, I don't dress like city folk or talk like 'em :))--but I still perk up over little things like real grass (versus weeds), the life cycle of a tree (which I must see at a distance from my house), real wildflowers along a road (versus chickory and Queen Anne's Lace which grows anywhere), and a red barn on the way to Dad's house. Everything is right with the world, when I see that barn still there.

If you like old world barns, you should visit Lancaster County, PA. It's Amish Country, so you can get that all's-right-with-the-world feeling about once every five miles. Five miles might not seem like a large trek in a car, but if you get behind a horse and buggy, you can walk it almost as fast. lol
 
TICA said:
I see a lot of ads that will say "free barn to be moved". If only it were that easy! Some of them are lovely but like the ones in the pictures, are really old and would have to be taken apart and put back together. I'd be willing to do that if I had the right gear and a big truck. I'll keep looking and if the right one comes my way, I'll certainly look into it more.

Ahhhhhh, my kingdom for a barn.......
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My cousins took old barn planks to panel their family rooms. It changed the feel from "family room" to "cigars and cognac, anyone" rooms.

Unfortunately, because they couldn't afford the house they wanted on their salaries, they kept buying shells, upgrading it to something elegant and turning it around on the market. The last time they did that, they didn't realize their house was the last house available in the subdivision they wanted to grow old in, so they got a nice house with cash, but in the wrong place. lol
 
Pappy said:
I grew up mostly in the country at a time when many families had a farm, big and small. We had a few animals and two small barns. The first barn my folks tore down was put together with wooden pegs and few nails. We all had a lot of laughs watching the menfolk trying to get it to fall down. It just wouldn't budge. Soon, the saws came out, and the barn was history.

The second barn, my favorite playing place, had to come down to make room for my grandparents house they were building. It was a sad day for me as I had so many memories in that barn, including falling down the hay shaft and damn near breaking my neck.

Just along my stretch of road there were many beautiful barns and today, they are all gone. Take a ride in the country sometime and see what I mean. Silos falling down, roofs caving in and very few active farms anymore.
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When we were kids in the 1960s, we'd make peanut butter and crab-apple jelly sandwiches out of a loaf of bread, fill a canteen with Kool-aid and take off for a day-long adventure on our bikes (until the bikes couldn't go any further, but we could.) There was a lake about a mile from our home called Bell Lake. It wasn't really a lake, it was an Ox-bow in a river. But, past that was another one and another one. I don't know if they were really all called Bell Lake, but we named them "Bell Lake 2" (which was a swamp), "Bell Lake 3," and then between Bell Lake 3 and Bell Lake 4, there was an evergreen forest with an owl. (Never saw the owl, but we spent time that day finding splatted fur and bones--what owls regurgitate after eating--and examined them, until we figured out what that animal was.)

After the forest was a field. It was already late afternoon by the time we found it. It had a barn--not the grand barns that towered high above even adults--but two short-stories tall, falling over--literally, (About a 30 degree angle) and just big enough to have one car in it. The car was still there. There wasn't enough left of it (or the barn) to tell for sure, but we all agreed it was a Model A. Very little leather left, but the springs stood tall. Missing a door, but it had the other one. Missing three out of four of its lights, but the passenger-side headlight remained. No roof, but barn planks that hinted the second floor of the barn wasn't always just a catwalk.

I'd be mortified if I found out my kids were crawling around in such a dilapidated structure. It's a wonder the thing didn't cave in around us, as we explored. I'm sure, if I could ever find that spot again (and it wasn't covered with houses like what happened to Bell Lake 2, since we lived there--and why do people want their houses that close to a swamp?), I suspect it would be hard to tell the difference between the barn and that car now. It was still the best adventure we had--one of the few adventures when we never realized how close we came to getting killed. lol

Thanks for the memory of barns. I've been in a few in my life. The Model A in that one made it the most interesting.
 
... There was a lake about a mile from our home called Bell Lake......
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That just opened a memory file that's been archived for over 40 years!

When I was around 7 to 13 my Mum, Nana, her friend from up the road and I would do an annual hike into the wilds to pick Christmas Bells.
ytnl.jpg
They grow in swamps and flower in December so off we'd go on a stinking hot day, walk a couple of miles to what was termed locally "The Everglades", and wade about ankle to knee deep in murky water gathering bunches of the things. We found out that it was infested with Tiger Snakes and the zoos used to collect their exhibits from there, but we never even saw one. They must have heard us coming and kept out of our way. It didn't stop us going there either. It wasn't Christmas without those Bells.

We went a bit further than usual one year and found a house! While we wondered who'd want to live there we realised no one did. Not any more. It was abandoned.

It was stuccoed brick, highly unusual in that area, and older than most houses in the district. It had water tanks still standing and an old unpruned orchard. It was on about 3-4 acres of high ground in the swamp and someone must have made a living from it once. They weren't poor either to have built that kind of house and afforded 2 big water tanks.

It wasn't vandalised, kids didn't do that back then. It still looked 'livable' from the respectful distance we kept. People like my Mum and Nana just didn't go where they had no business to be, but I was positively busting to explore it. It was just so intriguing.

The friend had lived in the district many years and even she didn't know it was there. Information came to light from even older people that an old couple had lived there until around 15 years earlier but they didn't know more than that. Apparently there was a road that led in from the far side of the property but no one was sure and we didn't have a car so we never went looking for it.

AWC, don't go looking for that old barn. I went back there, many years and a car later looking for that house. It, and the swamp, were gone. It was a housing estate and wall to wall suburbia. The magic, the swamp and the Christmas Bells were gone and I don't think I've thought of that house again until today. Thanks for the memories.

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Some Australian members here may be familiar with the district, it was between Ettalong and Umina toward the hills. It's all part of Umina now.

Did you know that back in the '50s. there was even a full sized air strip in Ettalong? It was built as an emergency landing field during WWII and was made of red clay and gravel roadbed and hard as a bull's head. It was between the town and the swamp and the kids used ride their bikes in races on it, and people learned to drive on it but of course it's vanished under houses now.

There was a lovely, eccentric old lady who lived alone in a 2 room rickety little house right on the edge of the strip, near the end, with her little black dog Nelly (omg, I can't believe I remember the name of the dog but not hers.)
It was on a sand track through scrub, a good 200 yards further on from where the streets ended and must have been there long before the airstrip was built. They probably built it to miss the house, because there was no way she was moving anywhere but in a box, she loved that tiny old house. I wish I could remember her stories but kids just don't pay enough attention to oldies. Damn.

We'd always stop and have a chat and she was almost as intriguing as the swamp house. Mrs Patience! It's come back, a strange name to suit a somewhat strange, but very likeable old lady.
Now I'll spend all day wondering how she lived there, she was never seen at the shops that I recall and had no family and no vehicle. Someone must have looked out for her though as she didn't appear fit enough to even walk to the shops let alone carry supplies that far home. She was very old and I suspect she was just hanging on to see Nelly out, she loved that dog even more than her house.

Right! I've had my morning ramble, coffee calls.
 
When I was a kid, we used to love finding the old dilapidated houses and barns when we were out riding on our horses.
I am sure my mom would have had a conniption if she saw some of the places that my best friend, Sheila, and I explored !

I remeber one old log house that was our favorite. We would pack a lunch and ride out to the old back country road that it was on, and have our picnic lunch there.
We discovered the wallpaper was old news papers from the early 1900s, and it seems like there was some about Teddy Roosevelt being elected President. We had a lot of fun reading those old newspaper stories, and looking at the sales ads.
Back in the wall was where they had hidden old the old whiskey bottles. I am sure that those would be great collectors items now if a person had them.
I don't remember there being any kind of lighting fixtures, so the last people that lived there must have been in the days of kerosene
Now, it is all part of a housing development, and kind of swallowed up into the town, and no traces of the old house or barn remaining anymore.
 
Housing developments - key to why we should never go back to what we saw as kids. lol

I was shocked by the development that rose next to the swamp, because it used to be a big field bordered on one side by a swamp, and the other sides by woods. We built the first house ever in that field. Sure, it was a "fort," dug partway into the ground, fortified by saplings cut with cub scout knives, and the walls were a combination of straw (wild grass that grew about a meter high in the field) and string, but it was the first house there.

My older brother and I went back the day after we finished it, to find these really old teen girls smoking cigarettes in our fort. They were so old and big, but we had our big brother to protect us, so we scurried home to get him, and he raced back with us to "get" those girls. (Looking back, I have no idea what we expected him to do when faced with several teen girls. Boys don't beat up girls, and besides, he was almost 12, so maybe he didn't see them as quite so old. lol)

We hid from them when we saw them, but when we returned with our big brother we were bold and ordered them out. They laughed at us. (How could they laugh? I mean, my big brother was the toughest guy on our block.) Then they took the very string we used to hold up the thatched structure (picture a little kid's version of the piggy's straw house) wrapped it around it, pulled, watched it teeter, and then started to light the straw with their cigarettes. We looked to our big brother, but all he did was stare at them. And then we all went home.

That was the last day we went to that field and the first day I realized my oldest brother couldn't fix everything. It was still our best fort ever. lol
 
Arkansas has an abundance of old picturesque barns that I often think I would love to ferret out, photograph and make a book out of. Alas, I am a terrible photographer and do not have a camera worthy of my lofty idea. Most of the barns are sitting abandoned in fields with grass and vines growing over them and have no hope of ever being renovated. Sad to see them rotting away.

Many years ago when we were looking for a small farm in Oregon in our price range, we tramped through a lot of really rough places and were about to give up hope of finding anything when our agent called and said she found something we might like. The place sat on a hill with a long driveway, hidden from view from the road. As we crested the top of the hill there stood the most majestic old style dutch barn with cathedral windows in the top floor on the end. As soon as I spied that barn I said this is the place, I don't care what the house looks like! It was a new barn, recently built by the owner whose wife decided she wanted more acreage so they decided to sell. The house was older, but very liveable and with some minor remodeling and interior paint it suited us just fine. But that barn was my pride and joy, and that's where I spent my time when at home, caring for my horses.
 
TWH....There seems to be no end to what crazy lengths us horsewomen would go to for our horses.
It's amazing that we can find husbands to put up with us!

The house I lived in growing up in Portland bordered a big field with one of those old huge cavernous two story abandoned barns. my two brothers were considerably younger than I, and generally ran amok, the way neighborhood kids did in those days. Apparently this old barn was their neighborhood gang's clubhouse. When I say gang, think The Little Rascals on steroids, not gangsta gang, such as we have these days.

That old barn apparently holds a lot of fun memories for my brothers as they still speaks of it fondly and often. Had their teenage disciplinarian sister known of some of the antics devised there, there would have for sure been some been some whoop ass applied to their skinny backsides.

That old barn was a classic design, probably built around the turn of the century and would probably still be standing if it weren't in the way of progress. I guess it was torn down sometime in the early eighties.
 
Old barns were a part of my life growing up. There were a lot of them all around our area. I smoked my first cigarette in an old barn and amazingly did not set it on fire.

As I mentioned earlier, I once fell down the hay shaft but landed on a pile on hay so bruises weren't too bad. I had my secret hiding place in the hayloft and keep my secret toys there. Growing up mostly alone I had to amuse myself and invented many things to do.

Got educated on the facts of life in a barn. A spin the bottle type of strip poker was played by a bunch of kids that lived on the lower end of my hill. Of course, in a barn.

i use to deer hunt with my relatives and we would go way out on a dirt road to a place called Julia's grave. It was an old tombstone out in the woods next to an old falling down barn. It was a good place to sit as there was a deer run right next to the grave. I did not go into the barn as it was ready to fall at any time.

i think if I had it to do over again, I would live way out in the country and for damn sure have an old barn.....
 

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