The Rural Voice, 1987-03, Page 19RIES
RAISING THE BARN. OF A COMMUNITYATWORK
By Andrew Dixon
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In the farming community of my
boyhood, it was still common practice
to have bees for any of the jobs that
were too heavy for one man or when
a number of jobs had to be done
simultaneously. During the various
seasons you would see the neighbours
congregating at the farms to thresh, to
fill the silo, to pluck fowl, and occa-
sionally to chop wood in the bush.
The combine harvester, the chain
saw, the forage harvester, and the
change in the poultry industry have
ended this communal effort and the
interdependence of neighbours. A
farmer can now carry out his entire
production without seeking his neigh-
bour's help. In fact, the neighbour
might be a total stranger.
One type of bee that I experienced
was the barn raising. This will not be
witnessed again, as no longer do we
erect barns so wasteful of fine trees.
Several of our modern barns could be
built from the wood used in a single
barn of timber construction. But the
pioneer had trees without number at
his disposal, tall and straight. He had
a saw and an axe and with little else he
contrived the barns that still dot the
Ontario countryside but which are
being replaced by less majestic pole
bams — or should I say sheds.
The barns of the 1880s and 1890s
are being replaced at an ever-increasing
rate as dry rot takes over and the buil-
dings deteriorate to the point of col-
lapse. I can think of no timber barn
whose members were shaped after
1900. The barn that my father erected
in 1901 contained many timbers out of
an older barn, and this is true of all the
barns raised in my time.
The size of the barns built during
my youth varied, but the tendency was
to make a bam wide enough for two
rows of cattle and feeding and clean-
ing alleys. This called for a width
of about 35 feet. The length varied
because the bam was erected in sec-
tions called bents, which were about
18 feet. Thus a four -bent barn would
be about 70 feet long.
The settlers' barns were built on
(Photo by Reuben Sallows)
logs which rested on the ground and
were called mud sills. Then the more
ambitious added a stone wall about
seven feet high as the foundation.
This type of structure produced the
bank barn. The livestock was housed
in the lower area and the feed stores
overhead. The set-up called for very
heavy overlays or joists to bear the
weight of the grain and hay. The
weight was not so great when the
material was loosely packed, but with
the advent of bales many of the barns
proved to be too weak.
• About 1900, concrete was intro-
duced into the area and my father's
barn was one of the first to have a
concrete foundation. If you look at a
bank barn and see a stone foundation
you may be sure that it was erected
prior to 1900. However, it must be
kept in mind that from 1900 to 1910
many farmers jacked their bams up
off the mud sills and put a concrete
foundation under the building.
I really don't know how many
able-bodied men would be needed to
MARCH 1987 17