Old buildings 'barn again'

Whether you're driving down a busy Interstate highway or a quiet rural lane, your eye automatically focuses on a barn. Any barn. A massive stone barn that blends into surrounding fields. A wooden dairy barn with an impressive gambrel roof. A Pennsylvania Dutch barn with quaint painted designs.

But if you think you've been spying fewer barns recently, you may be right. The hard truth is that barns are disappearing - faster than many realize.

The state of Vermont estimates it loses 1,000 of its 30,000 barns each year, and nationally the news is worse - an estimated half have vanished during the past 50 years, victims of fires, demolition, or simple neglect.

The problem is, farmers have to make a living and often can't afford to reconfigure or adapt outmoded buildings, especially when crop prices are down.

Restoring an old barn can cost $25,000 or more, depending on what has to be done.

Even then, the structure may not return to its original agricultural use. Older barns are anachronisms. Their design, says Bill Kimball of the National Barn Alliance, dates to a time when loose hay storage was a major function of barns.

To adapt to modern farming, old barns often must have their interior spaces enlarged and door openings widened to accommodate larger machinery.

Still, it's a task that many barn owners undertake willingly, often with the help of barn preservation groups (see story on page 15). The restored barns profiled here hold within their walls many memories for the owners.

Birthday parties for farms are rare. So, when a party celebrates the joyful fact that a farm has been in the family for 100 years, the farm's barn better be dressed to the nines. That's what Galen Finkbeiner concluded.

Given the deteriorating state of his prized barn, Mr. Finkbeiner knew he had two choices: either spruce up the towering, Gothic-roofed structure, or tear it down.

If he rehabilitated it, where would the money come from?

One of Finkbeiner's uncles suggested e-mailing relatives, suggesting they pitch in a dollar or more toward the barn's restoration. The appeal struck a chord, and $8,000 was contributed toward repairs, which totaled $25,000.

The restored beauty made a glorious centerpiece for the family's 2000 reunion. "Normally we have about 60 or 70 show up on Memorial Day, but that year some 230 signed the guestbook," he says. Relatives came from as far away as Italy and Bolivia.

The 42-foot-high red barn is such a landmark that Finkbeiner's son, who works in Boise, Idaho, says it's even known there, 350 miles away.

Living in the heart of a basketball-loving state where thrilling games are called barn burners, Joey Kubesch traces some of her fondest childhood memories to playing pickup games against her brother in the family barn.

Today, she works diligently to maintain not just that barn, but also three others on the property. "Since 1974, we've kept up with things," she says, describing the "patch-and-go" maintenance she and her husband, Sid, have spent $50,000 on.

The property originally was owned by Joey's great-great-grandfather, James Cole, who bought it for his daughter, Kate Cole Porter. Her son was famous Broadway composer Cole Porter.

The family's oldest barn, built in 1904, is called the Good Enough barn because Joey's grandmother, when asked her impressions of the building as a teenage bride, said, "It's good enough for me."

Currently receiving a lion's share of TLC is the main barn, a 40-by-100-foot white giant that's the biggest of the bunch.

Finding a contractor to stop the leaks and rebuild the crumbling fieldstone foundation of such a classic wooden structure is not easy, so Mrs. Kubesch considers herself fortunate to have found Amos Schwartz, a local Amish builder. "When Amos finishes, he says the barn is going to be good for another 100 years," she relates with satisfaction.

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