COUNT ME IN
[img_assist|nid=643|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=250|height=167]By Anita Rafael
Raise your hand if you know the difference between an English barn and Yankee barn. How about a bank barn? Would you know a crib barn if you saw one? All over Vermont, including up and down the winding back roads and hidden farm lanes in and around Stratton, eager volunteers are everywhere, ticking off checkboxes on special architectural survey sheets while learning to inventory and identify barns and outbuildings.
They are fieldworkers in the state’s first ever barn census, a one and one-half year-long project masterminded by a consortium of experts from the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and The University of Vermont’s Historic Preservation Program, along with Historic Windsor’s Preservation Education Institute, Save Vermont Barns, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and the Preservation Trust of Vermont.
“I am afraid most people think we are snooping,” worries volunteer Dan Hescock, who is also vice president of the recently founded Wardsboro History Group. Last October, he and the members of the town’s fledgling historic preservation organization voted unanimously, despite Hescock’s concerns about how people might react, to spearhead the barn census in Wardsboro.
Hescock, who won’t even venture a guess yet as to how many historic barns there are in his woodsy hometown (size, 29 square miles; population, 850 plus), says that just along Main Street “you could pick up a dozen.” And, he says, it is not so easy to get people to understand that what the history group is doing is just counting, not assessing. In fact, their mission is entirely straightforward: create a complete list of all the barns in Wardsboro, sorted by age, type and most importantly, condition.
“In the old days,” he explains, “farmers practically lived in their barns and so they took good care of them.” But now, he says, it seems as if barns are more or less “hidden.” He feels that if they are not being used for anything but storage, it is more likely that they are lacking routine maintenance. Hescock is right—chickens, cows, horses and hay need a decent roof over their heads; rusty old cars, lawnmowers and patio furniture, not so much.
Not all barn-owners in Vermont can do what Dorset resident Nancy Schwindt did to keep her 19th century dairy barn in good shape. When she and her late husband Paul bought their property some 25 years ago, the old unpainted barn got as much loving attention during restoration as the large white farmhouse in which they raised their family. “The barn was originally for cows and hay,” Schwindt says, “and it was still full of stalls and bins when we bought it.” At a one time, when the dwelling was known as the Gilbert House and took in boarders, the barn, which stands a short distance behind the house, likely housed carriages as well.
The Schwindts stripped the interior of the barn to its cathedral-like shell and loft, and replaced the windows and the roof, but did nothing to alter its “barn-ness.” The family’s two horses, Roxy and Sunny, are stabled there and so it still smells like a barn, with that immutable blend of dust, hay, grain and manure. And, it still sounds like a barn: the clop and click of hooves, the rattle of gates and those big-bellied snorts and friendly whinnies. Then, there is Jenny, the ubiquitous barn cat.
“I think my barn is extraordinary because of the huge cellar below the main floor,” Schwindt says. It is a Late Bank Barn, built in the Yankee style with entrances on the gable ends, and it is notably large, some 65 feet long. Like many contemporary buyers of ancient homesteads, she doesn’t have a year-by-year history of what was built when on her property. “I think my barn is in perfect health,” Schwindt says proudly, adding, “and I would like to be part of the barn census.” She’s hoping that the results of the survey will give her more information about its past, and perhaps even provide her with a colorful tale or two to hand down to future generations…..
