Editor’s note: Ohio Farmer has started a new series about barns. Writer Pamela Whitney Gray hopes to highlight the plight of the family barn. Gray, aka “The Barn Lady,” has written two books “Americanization of the Family Barn” and “Ohio Barns: Inside and Out With the Barn Consultant.”  

I am known as the “Barn Lady,” and I’ve been known to drive “under the influence of barns”. When you see me coming, watch out for sudden stops, U-turns, and other paparazzi-type activities. It’s all for the love of barns. From the outside, barns can be beautiful or dilapidated, both of which can make for interesting pictures. But to understand the whole barn story, one must enter the cathedral-like interior.

The original “Barn Consultant,” Chuck Whitney, was my father. He started passing on his passion and knowledge for barns to whoever would listen back in 1992. He would get excited about one barn or another and take me to see them on my visits home from Colorado. When I moved back to Ohio to retire and be with family, I became my father’s chauffer, gofer and main right-hand man during the last five years of his life. During that time, I learned many of the old ways and was also bitten by the barn bug.

As the “Lady Barn Consultant,” I continue to follow in my father’s footsteps by doing on-site barn consultations. It’s my mission to work one-on-one with barn owners, educating them on the unwritten history the barn holds, its multiple workings and the approximate date of construction. This gives barn owners the opportunity to ask questions and discuss first-hand any problems and repairs that should be addressed. I hope this information will encourage the family to preserve it for future generations. Nowadays, that sometimes means upcycling a fine old barn and finding a new and viable use for this most adaptable of historical structures.

This series seeks to draw attention to how fast the rural landscape is becoming void of our oldest and most historical structures. Ohio was the crossroad to the West. People from many cultures passed across its soil. But many also stayed to start settlements and cultivate its rich dirt. Over the years many ideas, traditions, and adaptions were exchanged. Ohio is a melting pot of barns and agricultural buildings, giving each farm and barn its own unique story to tell.

The book my father started and I finished, “Ohio Barns: Inside and Out with the Barn Consultant,” is written for the layman, it is a comprehensive look at barns, their history and the progression of barn construction over the last two and a half centuries.

I serve on the board of the Friends of Ohio Barns (FOB) and am currently its president. One of the perks of being a board member is being on the barnstorming committee each year to preview and nominate barns for the annual Barn Conference and Tour in April. Over the past 18 years FOB has held its annual event in 17 different counties around our great state. The county for 2018 is Carroll.

I have created a colorful PowerPoint program about the history and architectural value of barns, and I welcome invitations from clubs and organizations in Ohio interested in learning about the role the family barn has played in the growth of our country. I encourage people to get involved in FOB or any state or local organization interested in preserving our agricultural history.

I am also proud to be associated with the Knox County Barn Tour presented every other year by the Knox County Landmark Foundation.   

Gray can be contacted at 740-263-1369, or [email protected].