Rural barns, history all part of ‘Barns 101’ lecture Oct. 21 at Garfield Farm Museum

Submitted by Garfield Farm Museum

If you want to learn more about historic barns, attend “Barns 101” at Garfield Farm Museum at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 21. The lecture, given by museum special projects manager, Dave Bauer, will provide a general overview of historic barns.

This is the last generation that will have known barns as part of the rural landscape. With the changes in agriculture, most barns now no longer meet the size needs of large machinery or large livestock herds on the present day farms. As a result, forces of nature, consolidation of small farms into large farms, economics, and the passage of time is totally eliminating what was once such a dominate feature of the American countryside.

The lecture will include discussions on basic barn terminology, the evolution of barn types, and the differences between modern and historic barns. The talk will also cover Garfield Farm’s historic barns and how they fit in with Kane County’s other historic rural structures. The lecture will conclude with an optional tour of the 1842 hay and grain barn and the 1849 horse barn.

This year, the largest barn roof at the museum, was restored. More than 10,000 sawed cedar shingles were used and every roof board on the 1906 dairy barn was repositioned and re-nailed. This work revealed the movement to use less wood in barns, as this made to order barn used only two-by-four roof rafters instead of 2- by 6-inch boards. Cost cutting measures to increase profit resulted in structures that could not last as long or as well as the 1842 timber framed barn built by Timothy Garfield that used 6- to 8-inch log rafters. Yet between 1842 and 1849 when Garfield built his horse barn, once plentiful 30 inch long oak shingles were replaced by 16 inch long shingles just seven years later as the prairies lacked trees. A $12,500 matching grant from the Jeffris Foundation of Wisconsin is helping to pay for a historic structures report by Johnson Lasky Architects of Chicago on the 1842 barn to further its restoration. To donate to these efforts, contact the farm.

The cost for the lecture is $6 per person and refreshments will be provided. Reservations can be made by contacting the museum at (630) 584-8485 or info@garfieldfarm.org. Garfield Farm Museum is a 370-acre historically intact former 1840s prairie farmstead and teamster inn that volunteers and donors are preserving as an 1840s living history museum. Garfield Farm Museum is five miles west of Geneva, off Route 38 on Garfield Road. For information, call (630) 584-8485 or email info@garfieldfarm.org.