March 2, 2005
Author: Barns heart of the farm
Johnson traces down history of Old Mission barns
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Driving down Center Road, 13 miles one way to town day after day, year after year, Evelyn Johnson's eyes were drawn to the barns.
Nestled in at the edge of a field or standing proudly near the road. Lovingly restored and maintained or falling down decrepit. Whatever their location or condition, she began to wonder about their stories, convinced that every barn had one.
A few years ago, the retired teacher gathered her courage and began stopping along Center Road when she saw a barn. She found the corresponding home and asked the owner questions about the barn's history, construction, restoration and any notable family tales about it.
"I want to know their stories and maybe their secrets, too," said Johnson, a resident of the area for 13 years. "You can hardly go a mile without seeing a barn on the Old Mission Peninsula."
Thursday evening at the Grand Traverse Heritage Center, Johnson presented numerous pictures and stories she has collected about barns. More than 50 people attended the event, which was hosted by the Grand Traverse Pioneer and Historical Society.
"I think it's wonderful that she's helping to do this," said Wanda Crampton, whose husband's grandfather built the barn on their family cherry farm. "Ours is a third generation barn, we're just maintaining it and painting it and replacing rotting boards."
Over the years, Johnson has compiled many stories and eventually plans to weave them into a book. She still has many barns in her sights, having so far concentrated most of her interviews on the southern part of the 18-mile-long peninsula.
Barns were so important to a farm that pioneers often built them before they constructed their houses, she said. These barns, whether on a dairy or fruit farm, were the factories, the places of business for a farm.
"Barns are a living testimonial of our agricultural past and the pioneers who risked everything to settle the land and make a life and a living from it," said Johnson, whose husband, Carl, helps with her endeavors. "The barns in our area are indeed our heritage and culture."
"The barn is the heart of the farm," she added.
Johnson said peninsula barns were constructed in two ways: pegged post and beam or plank frame barns, a sawn board approach that came later. Many barns have a fieldstone foundation, a testimonial to innumerable hours of clearing stones from fields and putting them to use elsewhere.
Many barns had a 'spirit hole' near the peak, whose function went beyond ventilation.
"They let the good spirits in and the bad spirits out," Johnson said.
The peninsula's hilly land often dictated a banked barn, where one level on the backside of the hill was an entrance for cows while the upper level stored hay. Most barns were three-bay barns and had large doors so hay wagons could pull right in for unloading into the upper level.
She found some barns that, by the 1940s, had been divided into quarters for migrant workers. Technology revolutions after World War II transformed farming and, more recently, many farms on the peninsula have become subdivisions.
Johnson said that barns are disappearing at an alarming rate.
"Roof leaks are usually the beginning of the end," she said, although she has found owners who have sunk thousands of dollars and much labor into restoration. "Pole buildings are easier to build and it costs a great deal to repair barns."
Johnson has discovered some answers to why so many barns are red. While she found many white ones in her travels, plus others without paint weathered to gray, the enduring vision of the American barn is in red.
"Dropping iron scraps into a barrel of buttermilk transformed it into an inexpensive and easy red paint," she discovered. "Farmers thought red absorbed the heat in the winter and kept the dairy cows warm. Also, red was thought to be neighborly and friendly."