Last month, Tanya and I went to a talk on barns, at which the presenter mentioned that a barn would be taken down on the twenty-fourth of October. He told us the barn in question was at Parker and Spies (pronounced speez) Roads. And this Monday, the date in question, my husband agreed to go with me to watch for a bit.
The drive out there was gorgeous. Monday was a perfect blue-sky, peak-season fall day. As we traversed hills and flat land, past fields and pastures and woods, our conversation consisted largely of ooh and aah, punctuated by the occasional wow! Autumn is colorful in Michigan, and this autumn is no-holds-barred spectacular.
I worried a bit, as we drove further and further from town, that we’d arrive at Parker and Spies and not be able to find the barn. The on-line map showed a big farm at that corner, but would there be a barn there? The right barn? There are limits to the good nature of even the most indulgent spouse. Would we reach them before we reached our barn?
No problem. The distinguishing feature of the intersection of Parker and Spies this Monday was the skeleton of a large barn, silhouetted against the sky. Men on two cranes were prying loose one long piece of the barn at a time and flying each piece down to the ground, where two-person teams (not all of the ground crew were men) picked them up and took them away. They all worked carefully, but at speed.
The barn went up in the 1820s, according to barn expert Chuck Bultman. It was built to last, and last it did. It wasn’t always easy to disassemble. While we were there, there was a point at which a man on a crane was stretched out full length, using considerable muscle and a pry bar that was probably longer than I am tall, to loosen a piece of the barn near the ridge beam. When that piece finally yielded to his ministrations, my husband and I both gasped. We hadn’t realized it, but we’d both been holding our breath.
The barn will be put back together again in a new location. Mrs. Hieber who, with her husband, owns the farm on which the barn sat, didn’t want to watch the barn coming down. She invited us to park on the property, near the barn, but she herself did not want to watch. She said she’d see the process in pictures. She wasn’t sure exactly where the barn would be reassembled, nor what its new use would be. Whoever has bought the building is quite excited about it, and plans keep changing.
I talked some with Mr. Hieber, too. He watched with interest. His grandfather started farming that land in 1940, when the barn was already in the neighborhood of a hundred and twenty years old. Mr. Hieber says most of the barn, even now, was in pretty good shape. But repairs would have been too expensive for the use the family now makes of the stalwart relic.
“It used to be I ran thirteen hundred sheep on the property,” he said, “and I’d keep them in the barn in the winter. With the sheep inside, I could spend hours in the barn and not get cold. It was nice in there.” The Hiebers still raise sheep, but not nearly so many. They don’t need the big barn. The pole barns on the property provide shelter enough. Another thing that’s changed relative to the old barn is the size—and thus, weight–of farm equipment. “It’s too heavy for the wood floor,” Mr. Hieber said. Sure enough, their heavy equipment was parked in the pole barns.
I asked Mr. Hieber if the buyers of the barn would be taking its foundation as well as its timbers. He said, “That’s what they told me.” But there had been some wiggle room in that plan, last he knew. The foundation of the barn is fieldstone mostly, with a nice distribution of whatever other stone came to hand. I hope it will be as handsome in its new home.
Mr. Hieber and I spent some time marveling at the ridgebeam. How on earth did the people who raised the barn so long ago lift that heavy, heavy timber so high? According to Chuck Bultman’s presentation, barn building was a specialized business. Barns were designed by experts and raised by communities.
And Chuck, an architect, gives barns new life. This barn, when it’s raised again, should outlast all of us. Monday, against the sky, it showed off its proud bones.
28 October 2022
What a lovely story! I wish I could have been there to see this barn along with the beautiful fall colors!