Old barns

    

One of my great, great grandpa's tobacco barns

     Everywhere you look here in WV, there's probably an old barn, some are even a century or more old. Growing up in rural WV, I had the opportunity to explore  old barns and other structures from the past like corn cribs and coal houses. I've always been interested in these old structures, especially after I got a little older and started to really appreciate the craftsmanship and I wondered how people built these huge barns with the limited tools and technology of the day. I mean it wasn't like they rented a crane to lift these heavy logs.

     Years ago they held gatherings called "barn raisings". The whole community would come together to help their neighbor build their barn. That's a thing of the past, though, I doubt you could assemble the whole community to do anything nowadays, much less something that doesn't benefit them. 

     They had different techniques for raising a barn, but generally it involved building the walls on the ground and lifting them up using a tool called "Hillbilly muscle" as Mark Bowe from the show Barnwood Builders would say.

     I've read that some of these barns could be built by just a couple of men, depending on the type of logs they used. The species of tree they used really just depended on what was growing on the farm. I still think it's pretty impressive to do it with lighter weight logs, considering some of these log pens are around 15 feet tall. A popular species for barn building was Oak and Oak is not light weight, but it is strong and durable. Another popular choice was Tulip poplar, which is also tough but a little lighter 

     In some cases, they could leave the logs round, but in other cases they had to hand hew the logs with axes or a draw knife. Hewing is the process of flattening out the logs on one side. 

     They used different notches to get the logs to fit together (on a barn or cabin) one popular notch was called the dove tail notch, theres also one called the half dovetail notch. When it came to putting the roof on, a notch called the birds mouth

 notch was used to put rafters on. I've also heard of what's called Mortise and tenon, which is where they used large wooden pegs to hold the bents together in a timber frame barn, but I don't think that's too common here.

     Most of the old barns around here in southern WV are tobacco barns built to hang tobacco in so it could dry, of course they served other purposes too like storing equipment and housing livestock.

     Barns were essential to a farmer in the early 1900's and late 1800's, it was something they could not do without.

     You ever wonder why barns are traditionally red?

Nowadays  it's usually paint, but years ago farmers used to use linseed oil to water seal their barns . Now, linseed oil is colorless but farmers would add different stuff to it. One common thing was something you have a lot of on a farm- rust. The rust in the linseed oil would protect the barn from moss and other fungi but a side effect was giving the barn a redish hue. I think everybody kind of imagines a barn as being red when they picture it in their mind.

Linseed oil is still used in wood stains today. I think farmers back then were a lot smarter than they get credit for.

EDIT 5/11/21 

You're probably like "ok Andrew, you told us a little bit about the logs and how they used to build with them. Not all of the barn is built with logs though". It's probably worth mentioning that the boards they built the outter sheds with were usually cut on a saw mill but they usually started out as a tree that was cut down there on the farm. It wasn't like nowadays where you just make a trip to the lumber store.

Thats whats so fascinating to me about this stuff, you had to make everything.

Sawmills, if youre wondering, have been around for hundreds of years and even pre-date America.