Signs of Spring!

It was great to be outside yesterday, visiting a historic dairy farm, now enjoying new life as Crossen Arabians - here's this year's new foal, 3 weeks old. That was the most obvious sign that a new season is arriving any day now.

More to celebrate today:

  International Womens Day 

and

  National Agriculture Day 

New Lives for Old Barns

We now have shirts available for our volunteers and fans!

These shirts can be worn while you are out in the field surveying barns or just talking about barns with your friends.

To order: http://neprintandgraphics.com/store/index.html

Last week I told a sad story of decaying barns. This time the good news - barns ARE being rescued - some are re-used for new and different purposes. For example, a barn makes a great antique shop - here's one in Coventry.

A barn can become a cafe as in this Easton example.

A chicken coop in Chaplin is an artist's studio.

A pair of barns on Stone House Lane in Guilford are undergoing a transformation into a daycare center - you'll barely recognize these if you stop by today!

Nearby, the former 1880s barn of the Whitfield House (the landmark stone house from 1639) has been a caretaker's house and now is a museum exhibit space.

Before and after: the Karosi family barn in Ashford was reincarnated as the family's home.

These examples were all re-used on their original sites, but barns can be dismantled and re-erected on a new site or a new foundation. Even a historic barn may incorporate recycled timbers from an earlier one. Keep an eye out for un-matching joinery such unused mortises.

Photography: D. Fitton, C. Hitchcock, S. Lessard, W. Karosi

We're Losing Our Dairy Farms

Dairy farms are going out of business all across our state.

In Wallingford this shows how development is taking over the land where dairy farms and orchards once thrived. Barns fall down from neglect or they are bulldozed for subdivisions and industrial uses.

Like many others, this farm in Coventry has lost the signs of activity (from tractors and tools to the cows themselves) that accompany the working farm.

In Willington, the Mihaliaks' farm has just given up its dairy business.

In a more hopeful sign, this Orange farm has lost its dairy herd - here is the empty ground floor stable barn (converted use of an older English barn) with the old stanchions -

but a new generation of the Treat Family has resumed farming, growing vegetables and Christmas trees.

And efforts are under way to keep dairy a part of our landscape and diet - groups like ctmilk.org and the Working Lands Alliance are working to keep dairy farming viable, preserve farmland, and promote local food.

Photo credits: Willington, M. Lacy; Others, C. Hitchcock

Travels of a Barn Hunter

I’m Charlotte Hitchcock writing today's post. I began working for the Historic Barns project as a volunteer barn-hunter in 2007. I “adopted” several towns and went out looking for the barns. It was a great way to learn more about the back roads of the state I’ve lived in for 35 years.

Many of my favorite barns are on the working farms.

Some of them are beautifully maintained – an impressive accomplishment considering their size! This New England dairy barn at Hayland Farm in Orange was built in 1910 with fire-proof brick and stone to replace an earlier barn that had burned. The farm delivered milk to New Haven and brought back garbage to feed the pigs.

Other barns show the wear and tear of their long history, with repairs and adaptations that are made with materials at hand. Here’s a bank barn in Coventry – the open fields run down to the banks of the Willimantic River.

Photographs:
Orange, Charlotte Hitchcock; Coventry, Julie Rosen