Farm Progress

Maintaining a traditional barn takes time, work, money and attention to detail.

Jan Corey Arnett

October 25, 2017

3 Min Read
BIG BARN: This featured barn is owned by Steve and Katie Barnhart in Clarksville. It is three barns put together totaling 99 feet in length and 45 feet to the peak.Maynard Mitchell

Steve Barnhart was just 19 when in 1994, he became owner of one of the biggest barns in Ionia County, Mich. Having grown up with brothers Jay and Scott on a small family farm in Kent County, where he has fond memories of playing in the family barn, Steve welcomed having his own barn. However, unlike Jay who still works their family farm, Steve’s barn at 11276 Drew Road, Clarksville, with just 1.5 acres. But even that did not deter him.

 “I bought another half-acre,” he says with a chuckle, recognizing of course, that the dairy beef cattle he would raise for several years couldn’t be pastured as herds once were. Today’s small farmers have to be creative when land has been split off from the house, barn and other outbuildings and sold separately.

A few years after buying his place, Steve met and married his wife, Katie. She is a registered nurse. He works full time for a wholesale propane and butane terminal. The couple has two children, Emma and Noah.

“I want to get back into raising dairy beef at some point,” Steve says, acknowledging that life right now, with two careers and two children, is hectic. He starts his calves at the north end of the barn, moves them after eight weeks to another section and has them ready for market at 14 to 16 months of age.

“A big barn like ours needs to have animals in it,” he observes. “When the only thing in a barn is a woodchuck, it will fall.”

A big barn it is. More accurately, it is three barns totaling 99 feet in length and 45 feet to the peak. The barn’s gutter cleaner ran throughout the length, including to each of four large calf pens, making cleaning a less back-breaking chore.

While Steve would like to know the barn’s history, he guesses it was built in the early 1900s, judging from its hand-hewn beams and pegged construction. The house on the property was built in 1952, replacing one that was lost to fire.

“I love old barns, and my brother loves old barns,” he says. “The cool thing about these barns is that they were built by people who used hand tools and plumb bobs. They didn’t have tape measures and power tools. They just don’t build barns like this one anymore. It was all done with ropes and teams of people working together. People don’t respect barns as they should.”

But Barnhart acknowledges that maintaining a traditional barn takes time, work, money and attention to detail. “I have rewired it, added lighting, and made repairs,” he explains. “I’ve replaced the water line, installed drinking equipment, and jacked up and stabilized an area where part of the supporting structure had settled and cracked.”

He replaced the center barn’s roof in 2001 and has had the roofs painted. “You have to keep a roof on them. If you don’t you’ll lose that barn in five years,” he says.

His barn has suffered some storm damage that he knows will require the repair and replacement of siding. “You have to balance the expense with the return, however you define it. Barns have to be maintained.”

He says when he passes barns with neglected roofs and doors standing open to the elements, exposing the fact that the barn is filled with junk, he cringes. “All that junk tells a story. But leaving the doors open to weather damage destroys the barn.”

When Barnhart makes repairs to his barn, he will be reminded that once upon a time it was not today’s weathered gray or even in some areas, almost a baby blue. “Up under the eaves and in a few places here and there, you can tell what it looked like long ago,” he says, picturing it in his mind’s eye. “This barn was forest green, something a gentleman I met not long ago confirmed. He told me he walked past my barn every day twice a day walking to and from Rosenberg School. It definitely was green.”

Arnett writes from Battle Creek.

 

 

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