Some people say barns are a part of my DNA — and they are right. Growing up on a dairy farm in the 1950s and ’60s, I quickly learned the importance of the barn to our farm’s success and our family’s survival.

Over the years, my passion for saving barns has become such an important part of my life. I’ve talked with scores of people and visited countless barns. With delight, I’ve explored Facebook sites devoted to barns. Time and again, people say or write, “Oh, the stories that barns could tell.”

Five years ago, Jennifer Kiel asked if I would like to do a monthly feature for Michigan Farmer on barns around the state. I was happy to say, “Yes!” The assignment has allowed me to meet wonderful barns and barn owners from Marquette to Manchester and Traverse City to Bay City.

Recently, I looked back at the notes I’d written from learning about those barns and the stories told.

With cows as witnesses, one barn was the setting for young Upper Peninsula farmer George Gage to propose to his sweetheart, Irene. Another barn, per its owners Mort and Luella Westcott, “belonged to a moonshine farmer, and that doesn’t mean he milked cows by the light of the moon!”

People often tell me the barn is where they go to have solitude or spend some time in prayer. Like my own father, I choose the barn as my refuge, far beyond farm function.

Responsible barn owners most often tell me that for a barn to survive, it must have a good roof and conscientious maintenance. More than one pointed out that saving the traditional barn was more cost-effective than replacing it with a metal structure. Rob Getzloff of Getz-Milk Dairy in Wilson said, “I saved a significant amount of money by making the existing barn our milking facility.”

“A good barn makes economic sense,” said Charlevoix barn owner, Carl Dhaseleer.

There were happy stories told with sparkling eyes, and now and again, a tale marked with tears. And quietly, as one farm wife gazed out her kitchen window, she shared the account of a tragic accident for which, like the line from the Carl Sandburg poem, “The barn was a witness, stood and saw it all.”

I found just seven of the 60 barns covered in the pages of Michigan Farmer are under 75 years of age, with the majority (29) of them being between 100 and 150 years old, and six of them known to be more than 150 years old. One was quite new, built on the same footprint where a grand barn burned because of rodents gnawing on old electrical wires. Its owners told me, “There was never a question that we’d rebuild. The barn was part of our heritage.”

Most barns are privately owned, but one belongs to Concordia University, another to the city of Saline and a third to the National Park Service. Two barns are held by groups of people who joined forces expressly to save the barn or its farmstead, those being Friends of the Thumb Octagon Barn in Gagetown and the Waterloo Farm Museum, Grass Lake. One of the barns is among the largest in Washtenaw County, another is believed to be the oldest in Mackinaw County.

Nearly half of the 60 barns have some portion devoted to storage, with one sheltering IRoc cars and another, antique tractors. Just 13 provide housing for animals and another 13 are needed for general farm or workshop space. Readers have been introduced to barns having new lives — an apartment, a home, furniture store, dental practice, taxidermy shop, concert setting, theater venue, campground office, shower facility, agricultural education center and event space. Other uses I have documented over the years include wineries and microbreweries, a residence for people with traumatic brain injury, art and recording studios, and churches.

The barns featured in Michigan Farmer were not chosen at random. In only one case was a barn in rapidly deteriorating condition; its owners were unable to maintain it, though they hope someone else might save it. Its owners, Fred and Ferne Feikema, said the rare, round barn near Evart, “has been the subject of dozens of paintings.”

I am asked from time to time if I know of a good barn that might be available to be moved or if I am aware of property for sale with a sound barn. These inquiries give me hope more barn owners, even if not currently using their barns, will think “S.A.V.E.” – Stabilize for soundness. Adapt as needed. Value the utility. Extend the barn’s life.

In just a short stretch along M-37, north of my Battle Creek home, several beautiful barns with tremendous value and potential are being lost to roofs with holes, sides torn by vines, foundations eroded by water or cracked by tree roots. All are reparable, and all are worth the expense. There is nothing that can take the place of a genuine, timber-frame barn.

The Civilian Conservation Corp put men to work reforesting Michigan under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. Roosevelt said, “Our greatest task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely.” He believed that “through this employment [we can] accomplish greatly needed projects.”

Eventually, CCC crews built bridges and wildlife habitat, relocated moose, and fought fires. In the process, they supported their families and acquired skills, stamina and self-esteem. It was a win-win proposition for them and for our state.

There isn’t a single challenge that could not be overcome in saving America’s barns if people worked together — suppliers, craftsmen, workers, barn owners, communities, organizations, lenders and governments.

I look forward to the day when Michigan Farmer can proudly announce that, like the CCC, the BBB — Barn Building Brigade — has arrived to save a barn near you.

Then, five years and maybe 6,000 barns later, there will be more barns with wonderful stories to tell.

Arnett writes from Battle Creek, Mich.