Forming the Future of Barns: Winter Meeting

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Are you part of a barn preservation organization? And are looking to network and gain knowledge to strengthen your organization? Then…

Join us for our Winter Meeting!!! February 17-19, 2012 • Upper Arlington, OH •  The Amelita Mirolo Barn

As part of the mission of the National Barn Alliance, we are committed providing a platform for barn preservation organizations and owners to connect and share information. On February 18, we invite barn preservation organizations to join us for networking, educational workshops, informative speakers, and socializing.

Joel McCarty, Executive Director of the Timber Frames Guild, will share his organization’s secrets for success as the morning keynote and Alex Greenwood, co-founder The NJ Barn Company and co-author, Barn: The Art of a Working Building, will speak to adaptive reuse for barns in today’s world.

Workshops will cover barn surveying, marketing the organization, and membership development. Breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be served throughout the day.

Previously the winter meeting was limited to Board members as important face time for an organization where the current Board hails from eight states; so usually our “meetings” are necessarily monthly conference calls. This year the NBA is attempting for the first time ever to bring together representatives of all barn preservation organizations.  The goal is to foster improved communication and the interchange of Best Practices.  We need to learn from each other in order to better promote the awareness and preservation of America’s Heritage Barns and Rural Vernacular Architecture.  This is an exciting development for our small niche of preservation.

Please let us know if you plan to attend to info@barnalliance.org.

NBA 2012 Winter Meeting Full Agenda

Imagine a landscape without barns? No? Then join us in saving them!

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Yellow Barn

This beautiful barn outside of Erie, CO, is endangered. And due to real estate crash slowing development, has been given a reprieve. For now. In high growth areas near cities and resorts, new development is literally consuming the historic rural landscape.

As age, obsolescence and sprawl take their toll, barns are disappearing from the American landscape at a tremendous rate. There are more than 55 million people and 80 percent of our landscape is rural. It is a diverse landscape including farmsteads and ranches. The National Barn Alliance is working with state, local, and national partners to strengthen efforts to document and preserve these icons of our rural heritage.

Are you passionate about barns as we are at the National Barn Alliance? Yes? Our historic barns need an advocate. And that advocate be you. Join us as member.

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Thanks to barn enthusiast and photographer, Shaun Dalrymple, for sharing his “Yellow Barn” photograph with us.

Raising the Barn at the Anna Julia Cooper School

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Our Teamworks & Timbers program visited the Anna Julia Cooper Episcopal School in Richmond, VA, recently.  Over 50 students from this independent, tuition-free, faith-based middle school for students of limited resources primarily from Richmond’s East End neighborhood participated in putting together this life-sized 3-D puzzle. The raising took 4 hours where the teens worked as a team to figure out how to put together this 130 piece, 1100 pound timber frame. Along the way they learned about types of wood, history of rural structures, parts of a barn, and most importantly why team work is so important…. one person can’t raise a barn. Unknowingly, they employed their math, science, engineering skills to raise this Dutch-style barn with great success.

Thank you to principal, Mike Maruca, and his wonderful faculty and staff for allowing us into their school and sharing Teamworks & Timbers program with their students!


Teamworks and Timbers is the National Barn Alliance educational outreach program bringing youth face-to-face with America’s disappearing rural heritage and trades. The program is designed to plant the seed for preservation while sharing history and teaching science/engineering/construction skills to youth in grades 4-12.

Need Holiday Gifts for that Barn Lover? New Barn-focused Books

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Looking for a gift for your barn lover? There are two new books out and worth taking a look at.

Bygone Treasures and Timeless Beauties: The Barns of Old Milton County by Robert Meyers. This is the first book to document in words and beautiful color photographs the barns and the people who have made their marks on a historically significant region of Georgia. It takes the reader from the oldest barns in the region to some of the magnificent new horse facilities that will become the historic treasures of tomorrow. Charles Leik, president of the National Barn Alliance, gives his recommendation.

Michigan Barns, Et Cetera: Rural Buildings of the Great Lake State,  by Jerry R. Davis, is a skillfully illustrated book that features fifty images (suitable for framing) of barns, covered bridges, churches and other rural buildings throughout Michigan.  Each drawing is enhanced by a short vignette containing interesting facts, figures and anecdotes about the featured structure.  Michigan Barns, Et Cetera is an engaging read for anyone interested in art, architecture and the rural history of Michigan and the American Midwest. Anybody interested in the preservation of old barns and buildings will love this book.     About the Author: Jerry R. Davis is a Michigan native who immigrated to New Mexico about fourteen years ago. He taught junior high school history and geography in Michigan schools for thirty-one years.    He  is a member of SouthWest Writers and the New Mexico Book Co-op.

Both would make nice coffee table books.