Giving Old Barns New Life: Wisconsin's Changing Farmstead

Profound changes are occurringin Wisconsin’s agriculture that affecthow people live and work in thecountry. Many farmstead buildings,built for a particular purpose, haveseen that purpose vanish, yet thesebuildings form part of the characterof Wisconsin. This publication is thesecond in a series about historic barnsand farmstead buildings, and why it isimportant that they be saved forfuture generations. The first two pub-lications focus on the history of barnsand farmstead buildings in Wisconsin,basic styles of barns, the history ofsilos and other farmstead structures,farm buildings built by various ethnicgroups, and the natural beauty associ-ated with barns. Future publicationswill cover a number of topics relatingto the restoration and maintenance ofhistoric farmstead buildings.

Beginnings

Wisconsin’s farmsteads havechanged greatly in the past130 years, especially in the

past half century. The reasons for thisare tied to the region’s climate, vegeta-tion and geology, and particularly tochanges in agriculture.

Wisconsin’s climate defines itsagriculture and thus its farm build-ings. In many parts of the state frost isnot unusual in late May, with killingfrosts coming again in mid- to lateSeptember. Thus crops with longgrowing seasons are excluded. Cornfor grain, which requires a 100-day orlonger growing season, is often aquestionable crop in north centralWisconsin and impossible in the farnorth. Corn for silage, harvested earli-er than grain corn, is grown in all buta few areas of the state. Forage cropssuch as alfalfa and clovers, and a hostof vegetable crops such as greenbeans, peas, sweet corn, cucumbers,carrots, lettuce and cabbage also dowell in the central and southernregions of the state.

Rainfall is usually ample,upwards of 30 inches per year onaverage, and with cool temperatures,grass and forage crops do especiallywell. Without a doubt, though, it iswinter that defines Wisconsin, gives itits character, influences its people andabove all, explains its agriculture andfarm buildings. It is not uncommonfor temperatures in the northern halfof the state to dip below minus 30and even beyond minus 40. Wintertemperatures are more moderate insouthern Wisconsin and those coun-ties closest to lakes Michigan andSuperior.

Wisconsin’s changing farmsteadsJerry Apps

Farmstead with gable-roofed bank barn and tobacco shed (abovebarn), Vernon County. This farm was first settled by a Norwegianimmigrant in the 1840s and is still in the same family.

Givingold barnsnew life

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University of Wisconsin-Extension

State Historical Society of Wisconsin

Wisconsin Trust for HistoricPreservation

Snowfall, too, influences farming.In most years, snow arrives by mid-November and remains until March,especially in central and northernWisconsin. The capacity to withstandheavy snow loads is built into thedesign of all Wisconsin buildings,especially the agricultural structures.The placement of farm buildings inthe farmstead may also be influencedby winter as well as many other fac-tors including topography and orien-tation to the sun.

The vegetation the early settlersfound in Wisconsin influenced thetype of farming they pursued, as wellas the buildings they constructed. Insouthern Wisconsin, and to someextent in the central region, early set-tlers found vast prairies with smallforested areas. The trees were mostlyhardwoods, burr oak, white oak, blackoak and hickory. To the north, theprairies gave way to thousands uponthousands of acres of pine forests thatstretched as far as the eye could see.In the early settlement years, farmingremained in the southern and centralsections of the state. Farmers did notmove into the northern regions untilafter the lumber men with ax andcross-cut saw marched across thenorth, clear-cutting the forests andfloating the great pine logs down therivers to the saw mills.

The vast amount of both hard-woods and softwoods in Wisconsinprovided easily accessible and relativelyinexpensive lumber for building nearlyany kind of structure from a barn thatrequired 12-inch by 12-inch timbersto a chicken house where rough-sawedtwo-by-fours would suffice.

The great glaciers that movedacross much of Wisconsin thousandsof years ago left in their wake landstrewn with field stones and boulders.The glaciers influenced the soil typeswhich in turn dictated what cropscould be grown. They also providednatural building materials such asfield stones for barn walls, silos, andin some instances, entire buildings,plus clay and mineral deposits forproducing bricks. In non-glaciatedareas of the state, rock outcroppingswere often near the surface, providingquarried rock for building walls andentire buildings.

Farm buildings reflected the agricultural interests and abilities ofthose who settled the land. The vastmajority of the people who came toWisconsin came to farm. This trendbegan in the 1840s, peaked in the1850s and continued beyond theCivil War.

The first farmers came toWisconsin in the late 1830s and1840s, from New England, Vermont,New Hampshire and upper New Yorkstate. They did not come as subsis-tence farmers, as some would believe,but as agriculturists who wanted to dowell on these new western lands.Upon their arrival, and after clearingsome land, they planted wheat. By1862, in the midst of the Civil War,Wisconsin had become a major pro-ducer of wheat and flour.

Not long after the arrival of theYankees, as these New Englanders andNew Yorkers were called, Europeanimmigrants began arriving. Germansand Norwegians, Swedes andBelgians, Danes and Irish, Dutch,Bohemians and Luxembourgers, Swissand Welsh. First a trickle and then aflood. By the early 1900s, some 50different ethnic groups had settledWisconsin, most of them to farm.1 Atleast a dozen ethnic groups built farmbuildings that were similar to whatthey knew in their home countriessuch as saunas, hay barns, half-timberbuildings and bank barns.

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Farmstead with various wooden out buildings, plus a wind-mill used to pump water before electricity came to the ruralareas, Waupaca County.

A changing agriculture

Agriculture has changed dramati-cally since Yankee and immi-grant farmers hitched oxen to

breaking plows and began turningover the vast grasslands of southernWisconsin.

The early farmsteads, often logbuildings, consisted of a house, asmall barn, a granary, a modest chick-en house and sometimes a hog shelter.Of course there was also always aprivy located close, but not too close,to the back door of the dwelling. Thebarn often had a lean-to attached onone or both sides to provide shelterfor milk cows.

Many wheat farmers did well,and they soon advanced from logbuildings to those constructed ofsawed lumber. A new house appeared,a more substantial barn, and perhapsan ice house, a smokehouse, a summerkitchen, a well house, a larger chickenhouse, a carriage house for the buggyand wagon and a granary to storegrain for the horses and for sale.

Advancing from log barns, manysettlers built small, one-story framethreshing barns. Some of these werecalled three-bay barns as they weredivided into three sections with a dri-veway through the barn.

These barns did not house ani-mals but were used for threshing andstoring grain. Grain harvesting washand work. The wheat was cut with acradle (a special kind of scythe), andthen hauled to the barn where it wasthreshed on the driveway or threshingfloor of the building. The actualthreshing was done by driving horsesor oxen over the grain which removedthe kernels from the wheat. Some-times the wheat was threshed with aflail, a stick to which a leather thongand another smaller stick wereattached.

The mechanical reaper wasinvented by Cyrus Hall McCormickin 1835, the threshing machine wasinvented in 1837, and the grain drillin 1841. With these three inventions,wheat could be planted, harvested andthreshed more easily, thus making thethreshing barn obsolete as a place forstoring and threshing wheat. By themiddle 1800s many of these earlystructures became horse barns, andlater dairy barns. Some of them werephysically lifted up and a second storywas added underneath to house cattle.

As the years passed, the farmsteadbecame a collection of buildings, withthe barn usually the largest, though itwas still small when compared to thedairy barns that would appear severalyears later. The buildings were oftenarranged in a loose cluster around an

open area called the dooryard, whichconnected to a road that ran by thefarm. Visitors to the farm stoppedtheir teams in the dooryard and hadeasy access to the dwelling throughthe kitchen door, which was alwaysthe portal of entry for farm people. Tothis day, many farmers never use thefront doors of their houses and caneasily identify city people as thosewho walk to the front door.

Farmsteads were laid out follow-ing several general principles. Wherethe land was rolling or hilly, thefarmer took the the lay of the landinto consideration, especially if hewanted to build a bank barn requiringa hillside. Where the terrain was rela-tively flat, roads followed the surveylines and farmsteads were laid outstraight with the roads and, as someold farmers would say, “straight withthe world.” Farmstead buildings werelocated for ease in doing chores. Thechicken house, and the horse stablewere often close to the house. Thecorn crib was near the hog house.Prevailing winds were also considered.No one wanted to live in a housedownwind from the pig pen.

By the late 1860s, a major shiftbegan occurring in Wisconsin agricul-ture. Growing wheat, for years a reli-able crop, was no longer dependable.Crop yields dropped as farmers plant-ed wheat crop after wheat crop on thesame land, not realizing that wheat,like any crop, eventually uses up thesoil’s nutrients. Modern day informa-tion about fertilization was not yetcommonly known. With repeatedcropping and with vast acres of a sin-gle crop, disease potential becamegreat. Rust developed in many wheatfields, devastating yields.

Insects, too, presented majorchallenges to the crop. The chinchbug, a grayish-black insect with alight “X” on its back decimated acresof wheat. With its mosquito-likebeak, it drilled into the wheat stalksand sucked out the life-giving juices,and the wheat wilted and died.

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Early log barn, Door County. Most of the settlers coming toWisconsin first built log buildings.

With three strikes againstthem—reduced fertility, disease andinsect pests—many wheat farmersbegan looking for alternatives. Somemoved further west and continuedwheat farming in the Dakotas, Kansasand Nebraska, but many stayed inWisconsin. During these years ofsearching for a profitable way to farm,farmers in central Wisconsin, many ofPolish descent, began growing pota-toes. Potato cellars, small, two-storybuildings with most of the first storyunderground, appeared in these cen-tral Wisconsin farmsteads or nearbyfields. When the potatoes were har-vested in the fall, they were stored inthe potato cellar with the farmer hop-ing that prices would rise later in thewinter when he hauled the crop tomarket.

Further south, and in the south-west, many farmers, especially thoseof Norwegian descent, began growingtobacco for supplemental income inDane, Rock, Vernon and Crawfordcounties. In these farmsteads, long,relatively narrow drying sheds fortobacco appeared. A characteristic ofmany tobacco sheds is that everyother board on the side walls can beopened, allowing breezes to flowthrough the building and dry thecrop.

Sheep raising became popular insome of the southern counties withgood prices for wool assured duringthe Civil War. But by the middle1870s, wool prices dropped and sheepproducers became discouraged.

Hops growing began inWisconsin starting in 1852 and con-tinued to boom in the middle 1860s.Sauk County was the center of theactivity, as some growers became mil-lionaires, literally overnight. Hophouses, often square, two-story build-ings with a cupola on top were foundin farmsteads in this region. The hophouse was used for drying hop conesafter they were harvested. The hopsmarket crashed in 1867 and neverregained its former importance.

A few farmers, especially thosewho had roots in upper New Yorkstate where dairy farming had beenimportant, began looking at the dairycow in a new light. Dairy farming notonly required equipment that manyfarmers did not have, it required a wayof life different from that of the wheatfarmer. The dairy cow is a demandinganimal. It wants to be milked twice aday, everyday. Likewise, it wants dailyfeeding.


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Early potato cellar. Potatoes were stored inthe lower portion of the building.

Tobacco shed, Dane County. When wheat growing was nolonger profitable for Wisconsin farmers, many turned toother pursuits, including growing tobacco.

W. D. Hoard came to Wisconsinin 1857 from New York State andbecame one of the early dairy leaders.He was editor of the Jefferson CountyUnion in which he wrote about thevirtues of dairy farming. In 1889, theUniversity of Wisconsin’s College ofAgriculture was created and immedi-ately became interested in dairy agri-culture and the challenges dairy farm-ers faced. William A. Henry, the firstDean of the College of Agriculture,became an outspoken promoter of thenew industry. Hiram Smith, aSheboygan dairyman appointed to theBoard of Regents in 1878, alsobecame a strong advocate forWisconsin’s fledging dairy industry.

The word was getting out.Wisconsin farmers began switching tomilk cows. By 1885, Wisconsin hadbecome a dairy state. But it didn’thappen overnight. The transitionfrom the time when wheat was king,to the time when the dairy cowbecame queen took 25 years.

Making the switch from cropfarming to dairy farming was not aneasy decision. Dairy farming requireda substantial initial investment incows and in shelter for them. Thusappeared the dairy barn that becamethe most central building in the entirefarmstead, as is true to this day.Farmers spent upwards of two orthree thousand dollars for their barns,a considerable investment for the day.

Once a farmer decided to go intodairy farming, he made a long-termdecision. He often decided for hischildren and grandchildren, as evi-denced by the quality and sturdinessof the dairy barn’s construction. Theseearly barns were built to survive forgenerations.

Something else happened, too,when farmers switched from wheatgrowing to dairy farming. Manyaccepted the idea of diversified farm-ing, which meant not putting all ofyour farming eggs in one basket.From the time that dairy farmingbecame popular in Wisconsin—thelate 1800s to the early 1900s—almostevery farmer raised not only a dairyherd, but also pigs, a small flock ofchickens and maybe a few sheep.Many farmers also raised crops suchas tobacco, hops, potatoes or orchardfruits. Some also had a few head ofbeef cattle, but these were kept mostlyto provide meat for the farmer’s table.

Many farmers saw pigs as “mort-gage lifters.” This was particularly truewhen the price of pork was relativelyhigh. Because the size of the swineherd could be increased much morequickly than the dairy herd, hognumbers fluctuated wildly with porkprices. Some years farmers mademoney from pigs; other years theprice for hogs didn’t cover feed costs.Nonetheless, the dairy herd provideda more stable income.

As agricultural methods changed,the farmstead changed. Diversifiedfarming required an array of farmbuildings: a barn for the dairy herdand hay storage, a tobacco dryingbarn or a potato cellar, a brooderhouse to raise young chicks to maturi-ty, a hen house to house the poultryflock, a hog house for the pigs, a gra-nary to store harvested grain and acorn crib for cob corn storage.

New buildings were added andold ones removed. When tractorsbecame available, the horse stable wasused for other purposes. New storagebuildings proved necessary for thetractor and its equipment. With thehay bailer came new types of hay stor-age buildings, and old barns that for-merly stored loose hay were modifiedsomewhat to accommodate bales.With research on corn and grasssilage, new kinds of silos appeared.When electricity came to the farm, icehouses, well houses and privies begandisappearing.

With modern-day corn com-bines, the need for crib corn storagehas declined and large metal storageunits with crop drying capabilitieshave emerged. Each change in farm-ing called for new types of buildings.


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Turn of the century dairy barn, College of Agricultural andLife Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

By the 1960s another change inagriculture began occurring inWisconsin. Dairy farmers eitherexpanded their operations or they quitmilking cows, took up other agricul-tural pursuits, or sold their farms.Sometimes farms were consolidatedwith the result that the buildings onone of the properties became vacant orfell into disrepair.

Many dairy farmers increased thesizes of their dairy herds, enlargedtheir old dairy barns, built new, oftensingle-story dairy barns, and some-times both remodeled old barns andattached new additions. Travelingaround Wisconsin, it is not uncom-mon to see an older, gable or gam-brel-roof wooden barn with a single-story metal addition.

As dairy herds expanded, dairyfarmers’ interest in diversified farmingdeclined. They sold the pigs, keptonly a few chickens, and concentratedon raising crops to feed their largerdairy herds. Some crops requiringconsiderable hand labor such astobacco and cucumbers remainedpopular in those areas where theygrew well. Income from tobacco and“cukes” provided tuition money formany college-bound farm youngsters.

Some farmers left dairying togrow corn or soybeans. Wisconsinbecame the nation’s leading producerof sweet corn, snap beans and peas for

processing. Many central Wisconsinfarmers, particularly those on the flat,sandy soils of Adams, Waushara andPortage counties, bought out theirneighbors and began growing hun-dreds of acres of irrigated potatoes.When farmers sold their cows, theykept the old dairy barns to use forother purposes or let them fall intodecay and, finally, disappear. Dairyfarming became a memory for thesecrop farmers. New farm buildings,generally steel on a pole framework,were constructed to house equipment,and in some instances to store thecrops. The modern day potato storagebuildings, for instance, bear slightresemblance to their historical cousins,the little two-story cellars where pota-toes were stored in the mostly below-ground part of the building.

For those who turned to raisingcorn and soybeans, few farm buildingswere needed, only those for the stor-age of large machinery, fertilizer andseeds, and in some cases the crop. Inmany instances the corn or soybeancrop was hauled directly from field tograin elevator, requiring no on-farmstorage.

In a few cases, farmers switchedfrom dairy farming to raising beef cattle, broilers, turkeys or hogs inlarge numbers. Here the old dairybarn was often remodeled for the newagricultural use.

The number of Wisconsin farmshas decreased each year since the1930s, and farm size has increased.Wisconsin farms numbered about78,000 in 1994 compared to 138,000in 1960, and nearly 200,000 in 1935.Average farm size in 1935 was 117.4acres; in 1994 it was 217 acres.2 Thenumber of dairy farms and dairy cowshas plummeted, especially in recentyears. In 1960, there were 105,000dairy farms and 2.1 million cows inWisconsin. In 1995 there were29,000 dairy farms and about 1.5million cows.3

Even with these changes in dairyfarming, Wisconsin continued as thenation’s leader in producing severaldairy products, especially cheese.California passed Wisconsin recentlyin the overall production of fluid milk.

There were other shifts. With thevast changes in Wisconsin agriculture,fewer people lived on the land. In1850, 90 percent of Wisconsin’s pop-ulation lived on farms. By 1930, 50percent of Wisconsin’s populationlived on farms; by 1993 the numberfell to 1.6 percent.4

In some ways, Wisconsin agricul-ture is returning to where it was whenthe first settlers arrived and begangrowing wheat, except that now themajor crops are corn, soybeans, pota-toes and canning crops. Dairy farm-ing continues as a major agriculturalpursuit in Wisconsin, but it is a verydifferent kind of dairying than thatexperienced by the first dairy farmerswho built the old barns.

Many modern day dairy herdsinclude several hundred cows. Thenewest innovation for housing them isa greenhouse, identical to what onesees at a plant nursery. The plasticcovered greenhouse is far less expen-sive to erect than a more permanentbarn. In fact, one of the selling fea-tures of the greenhouse barn is that itcan be dismantled quickly when thedairy farmer moves on to some otherenterprise. Another common dairybarn is one constructed of steel andpole.


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Farmstead with older wooden barn and a newer metal one,plus silos of various older and newer silos, Sauk County.

Historic barns

The old barns are one way totrace the changes in agriculture.The historic dairy barns were

not all of the same type, which isobvious to anyone driving around thestate. The three most common typesare: 1) the three-bay barn; 2) the bankbarn; and 3) the two-story barn with-out a threshing floor. All three can befound in Wisconsin today.

The three-bay barnThe idea for the three-bay barn

came to this country from Europe.This barn was widely constructed inthe eastern United States, and whenNew England settlers of British ances-try moved to Wisconsin, they broughttheir knowledge of the three-bay barnwith them. Initially, the barn was usedalmost entirely as a place to threshand store grain.

The three-bay barn is a single-level, rectangular structure dividedinto three sections; each section iscalled a bay. Large double doors arefound on each of the long sides of thebarn. On the middle bay, or threshingfloor, grain was threshed with a flail.A flail is a hand threshing implementwith a wooden handle to which ashort, free-swinging stick is attached.When the threshing was finished, thelarge doors were opened so the breezecould blow away the chaff, leaving thegrain behind. The other two bayswere used for storing bundles ofwheat before they were threshed.

As Wisconsin moved from wheatfarming to dairy farming, many three-bay barns were modified by construct-ing a stable in one or both of the bayson either side of the threshing floor.The stable was about eight feet high,leaving considerable area above thestable area to store hay. A more fre-quent adaptation was to actually raisethe old grain barn and build a stoneground level underneath.

Those farmers who originallybuilt a barn to house dairy cattlelooked to a different kind of struc-ture than the little three-bay barn.The bank barn was the answer formany farmers.


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Three-bay threshing barn, Waushara County. Many of thesewere built during Wisconsin’s wheat growing days and laterconverted to housing for dairy cattle.

A grain storage and threshing barn couldbe transformed into a hay and dairy barnby jacking it up and building a stoneground level underneath.

granary inside corner

threshingfloor

hay track added

sliding doors

some timberremoved

Threshing barn

Hay and dairy barn

The bank barnOne can find bank barns in all

regions of Wisconsin and in manyother parts of the country as well. Thebank barn, a two-story structure, canbe 30 or more feet tall, 30 or more feetwide, and 60 or more feet long. Cattleare housed on the ground level, some-times called the stable or basement,even though it is often exposed onthree sides. Hay is stored in the barn’ssecond floor. Sometimes a granary isalso found on the second flour, whereoats are stored, and in some olderbarns, one occasionally finds a silo. Inthe older barns, the walls of the firstfloor were constructed of field stone(in the glaciated regions of Wisconsin)or of quarried rock (in the non-glaciat-ed regions, primarily western andsouthwestern Wisconsin). Most barnsbuilt after 1930 had poured concreteor concrete block walls.

The upper part of the barn wasusually constructed entirely of woodand sat on the basement level, or sta-ble part of the barn. Some barns werebuilt of stone and mortar. The bankbarn was sometimes built on the sideof a hill, or if on flat ground, anearthen ramp was constructed to theupper level. A farmer could drivedirectly onto the second floor of thebarn with a wagon load of hay to thethreshing floor, named after thethreshing floor of the old threshingbarn. Depending on the length of thebarn, there could be one, two orrarely three threshing floors (latermerely called barn floors). Eachthreshing floor had a double set ofdoors reaching from the floor to theeaves, often 12 to 16 feet.

The threshing or barn floor wasthe heart of the barn, the area wherehay was unloaded and pitched ordropped into the haymows on eitherside.


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Bank barn with gable roof, and wooden cupola, Dane County.Cupulas, the early ones wooden, and later ones made ofmetal, were ventilators. They also were often painted inattractive ways.

Late 1800s, gable-roofed bank barn, Dane County.

Detail of a ramp for a bank barn. When a convenient hillsidewas not available a ramp was constructed to provide accessto the second floor of the barn.

Two-story barns with-out threshing floors

Throughout Wisconsin the trav-eler can find two-story barns withoutthreshing floors. These are similar tobank barns in that cattle are housedon the first floor and hay is stored inthe vast second floor, but the two-story barn does not have a threshingfloor.

The second-story barn without athreshing floor did not appear untilafter 1867, when William Louden, a26-year-old inventor from Fairfield,Iowa, invented a hay fork and trackfixed to the roof rafters of a barn.During the mid-1860s a more primi-tive hay fork had been used whichallowed farmers to drag hay off theirhay wagons and up into the hay-mows. But there was no track to con-vey the hay once it was lifted off thewagon.

With Louden’s hay fork, a farmercould drive to the outside end of atwo-story barn and push either agrappling fork or a harpoon fork intothe load of hay and haul an ampleamount to the gable end of the barn,through the door to the track, andthen to anywhere in the mows. All ofthis was accomplished with a systemof ropes and pulleys. Many of thelonger two-story barns of this typehad entry doors at both gable ends sohay could be hauled into the barnfrom both ends.

Louden’s hay fork and carrierallowed farmers to build higher andlonger barns that had no threshingfloors. However, the barns had to befree of crossbeams to allow the hay tofreely move along the track once itentered the barn. This led to a differ-ent framing system and the gambrelroof.


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A manure carrier track, an early mechanical convenience fordairy farmers.

Roof extension on barn to accommodate a hay fork thatoperated with a system of ropes and pulleys allowing thefarmer to lift loose hay into the haymow without driving intothe barn.

Gambrel-roofed barn, fieldstone wall, Price County. The barncontinues to house dairy cattle.

Centric barnsWhile less common than the

three types of barns discussed earlier,round barns may be the most recog-nizable. Some of the earliest andfinest round barns were built by theShakers. In 1826 they built a roundstone barn at Hancock, Massachusettsmeasuring 270 feet around with walls21 feet high.

Round barns were not unusual inWisconsin. Nearly every county in thestate had at least one. Vernon County,in western Wisconsin, claims to havethe most round barns of any countyin the country. Fulton County,Indiana had made the claim earlier,but Vernon County barn buffs discov-ered 16 round barns tucked in thevalleys and along the ridges of thispicturesque county located south ofLa Crosse. Fulton County could claimonly nine round barns.

During the early 1900s, somecolleges of agriculture and particularlythe University of Illinois promotedthe round barn as one of the mostefficient types of barns. Round barnsrequire less building material toencompass the same amount of spaceas the other barn shapes. Octagonalbarn builders followed the same rea-soning; however octagonal and othermultiple-sided barns were somewhateasier to construct because there was aseries of straight sides rather than acontinuous circle. Bending barnboards to fit horizontally on a roundbarn was a challenge because theboards continually wanted to poploose. Some barn builders came asclose as they could to a round barn bymaintaining several straight sides. TheNashold 20-sided barn located nearFall River in Columbia County is anexample; another is a 13-sided barn inSheboygan County.


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Round barn, converted from a dairy barn to use for an appleorchard, Green County.

Octagonal barn. One of only a handful left standing inWisconsin, Ozaukee County.

Twenty-sided barn, Columbia County.

Development of silos

After the dairy barn, the silo isprobably the next most visiblefeature in most Wisconsin

farmsteads. Wisconsin is the leadingstate in the nation for the number oftons of corn for silage (8.6 milliontons in 1993) plus millions of tons offorage that are made into silage.5

Unlike barns, where settlersbrought ideas about how to buildthem from Europe and New Englandto Wisconsin in the middle 1800s,silos were a more recent innovation.The first silos in Wisconsin didn’tappear until the late 1880s. The ideafor a silo came from France andGermany where farmers used themstarting about 1845.

These early European silos werepits in the ground where choppedcorn plants were placed. The pit wascovered with dirt and the choppedcorn was allowed to ferment. To makethe pits more permanent, they weresometimes lined with masonry.6

The early silos in this countrywere also pits. One of the earliestrecorded silos in the Midwest wasbuilt by an Illinois farmer in 1873.The structure was 10 feet wide, 16feet long and 24 feet deep (eight feetunderground). It bore no resemblanceto today’s cylindrical silos scatteredacross Wisconsin like so many farm-stead exclamation points. A FortAtkinson, Wisconsin farmer built atrench silo in 1877 which was six feetdeep, six feet wide and 30 feet long.7

Farmers had problems with thesepit silos: spoilage was considerable,freezing was a problem in winter, andforking out the silage from eight orten feet below ground was a difficulttask. On top of the horizontal pits,farmers placed boards so that more ofthe silo could be above ground. Thissolved the problem of pitching silageover their heads, but increased prob-lems with spoilage and freezing.Someone, with a stroke of creativity,decided to stand the silo on end,board up all four sides and keep amodest pit under the structure. Sosilos moved from horizontal, mostlyunderground, to vertical, mostlyabove-ground structures. They weresquare towers, 20 or so feet tall withsix- to eight-foot, or sometimes evendeeper pits beneath.

Farmers immediately discoveredthat although they had solved a majorproblem—it was far easier to pitchsilage down from 20 feet than upeight feet—the silage continued tospoil in the corners of the structure.To solve that problem, farmers placedboards across the corners so theinside of the silo became octagonal.Because air remained in the cornersof the silo, there was still spoilage,but not as much as with the squaresilo. Another problem was fillingupright silos. The challenge waspitching the cut corn fodder into thesilo. Some farmers forked the fodderto a platform, and then from theplatform over the top edge of thesilo.


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Round, field stone silo, WaukeshaCounty. These generally preceded silosconstructed of wood staves.

Multi-sided wooden silo, Green County.This style of silo preceded those thatwere constructed as true cylinders.

A completely cylindrical siloappeared next. Some of the earliestones were constructed entirely of fieldstones, especially in glaciated areas ofWisconsin. Because of the pressurethat developed during fermentation,the field stone walls on these earlysilos were up to two feet thick, partic-ularly near the bottom. Some evenearlier field stone silos were construct-ed in the shape of a square.

The University of WisconsinCollege of Agriculture had beenresearching silos since the early 1880s,starting with pit silos of various sizes.Professor F. H. King conducted manysilo experiments, including the devel-opment of a cylindrical wooden silo.The silo was constructed of verticalstuds with a thin thickness of woodbent around the vertical studs on theoutside, and two or three thicknesseson the inside with tar paper placedbetween them.8 With the cylindrical,upright silo there was no spoilage inthe corners. But the King silo was notthe easiest to construct as it required

bending wood—a problem identicalto that of constructing a round barnwith horizontal siding.

The next silo that emerged wasknown as the wood stave silo and itbecame extremely popular inWisconsin and other states wheresilage was an important feed. Thewood stave silo was constructed oftwo-by-six tongued-and-grooved red-wood or cypress staves held togetherby steel rod hoops. The steel rodswere joined at the ends with iron lugsand nuts so they could be adjusted.

The advantages of the wood stavesilo were several: It could be erected ina day or two, the cost was moderate,and it had all the other attributes of acylindrical structure.


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Square, field stone silo, Kewaunee County. One of the firstupright silos in the state.

Barn with lean-to attachment plus short wood stave silo,Portage County.

Wood stave silo. Thousands of thesewere constructed in Wisconsin, but fewremain, having been replaced by con-crete stave, poured concrete and steelstructures.

By the early 1900s, concretebecame popular for farm buildings,including barn walls and silos. Thefirst poured concrete silos inWisconsin appeared during theseyears (some modern silos are stillconstructed of poured concrete). TheUniversity of Wisconsin College ofAgriculture advocated poured con-crete silos and made steel forms avail-able to do-it-yourself farmers. Therewere other variations as well.Concrete blocks and later concretestaves were the material of choice forsilos. The earliest known concretestave silo was erected in Michigan in1904. The concrete staves were twoinches thick, ten inches wide and 28inches long with interlocking joints.The concrete stave silo becameexceedingly popular in Wisconsin,soon replacing the wooden version.Thousands of concrete stave silos canstill be found throughout the cornand forage growing areas of the state.

Now and again one spots a bricksilo. Perhaps a little more numerousare the hollow-tile or vitrified tilesilos. The first ones were developedat the Iowa Experiment Station in1908. The hollow clay-tile blocks arefour by six inches thick, with rein-forcing steel wire embedded in themortar joints. The dead air spaces inthe tiles were supposed to make thesilo frost resistant.

In the late 1940s a new, revolu-tionary silo began appearing. The A.O. Smith Company of Milwaukee,manufacturer of glass-lined waterheaters and beer vats, began makingsteel, glass-lined silos—Harvestores,the company called them. This firstglass-lined silo was, in reality, a beerstorage vat stood on end. Althoughthey were considerably more expen-sive than the popular concrete stavesilos, the blue silos began dotting theupper Midwest, especially inWisconsin. The glass lining prevent-ed freezing and rusting, and the struc-ture was airtight, which eliminatedspoilage. Unlike all other silos, theHarvestore unloaded from the bot-tom, with a specially designed silo


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Concrete stave silo. University ofWisconsin–Madison campus.

Steel silo, Iowa County. Silage freez-ing was a serious problem with thistype of silo.

Brick silo, Waupaca County.

Glazed tile silo, Dane County.

unloader. As the silage was fed, a largeplastic bag at the top of the silo tookup the space where the silage hadbeen, to keep out air. The Harvestoresilos tended to be found in the moreprosperous dairy areas of the state.

To complete the silo story, todaywe see many farmers returning to apit silo with concrete sides and floor.The structure is built large enough sothe silage can be removed with a trac-tor and a front end loader. Anotherkind of silo is a long white plastictube that lies horizontally on theground. The tubes are about four feetin diameter and some appear to be 50or more feet long. Some farmers erecta movable feeding rack so that cattlecan eat from the end of the silo. Therack is moved as the silage is con-sumed. When the silo is empty, theplastic cover is discarded.

What we canlearn from oldfarm buildings

Like everything in our society,farming is changing rapidly.Barns that once sheltered a cou-

ple of dozen milk cows, may now,with additions, house up to 100 ormore cows. Or they may have beenconverted to storage, antique stores,conference centers, homes or dozensof other uses. Too often they merelystand empty, visible reminders of anearlier day. Little, slat-sided corncribs,smaller at the bottom and wider atthe top, designed to hold ear corn,have been replaced with round metalcorn bins. Two-story granaries, some-times with corn cribs attached on oneor both sides, have been replaced withmetal storage buildings that holdthousands of bushels compared to thefew hundred that were stored in theold granaries. Smokehouses, summerkitchens, hop houses, well houses, iceand chicken houses have been torndown, or are used for other purposes.Some of the more specialized build-ings, such as tobacco sheds continueto be used to store and cure tobacco.The early potato cellars have mostlybeen abandoned, too small to storetoday’s potato harvests. The early

wooden silos, some as small as ten ortwelve feet in diameter and 20 feettall, stand alongside monster silosthree times as tall.

Why keep the old farm build-ings? The reasons are many, but oneimportant reason is to remind us ofour agricultural history. Even thoughmost people today live in urban areas,their parents or grandparents mayhave been born on farms. Looking atan old barn, we may be able to under-stand something about what earlydairy farming was like in Wisconsin,when farmers shifted from growingwheat to milking cows. We can envi-sion what hay-making was like. Wecan picture steel-wheeled wagonsloaded high with sweet smellingclover, timothy and alfalfa creaking upthe barn’s ramp, the team of Belgianhorses straining in their harnesses andthe smell of freshly made hay mixingwith the pungent smell of horsesweat. We can see in our minds thehay fork thrust into the load of hayand pulled up into the mows where itlands with a swish, the steamy, often100-degree air filled with hay leaves.The farmer or his son or daughter,equipped with a three-tined fork,pulls and pushes the loose hay intothe far corners of the gambrel-roofedbarn, to be forked out again in winter,to the hungry cows stabled below.


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Glass-lined, Harvestore silo,Jefferson County.

Deserted farmstead, Portage County. With no maintenance,these buildings will soon collapse.

We can picture a few years later,a hay baler, thumping its way aroundthe field, and the farmer stacking thesquare bales on a rubber-wheeledwagon pulled by a John Deere B, aFarmall H, an Allis Chalmers or aFord 8N tractor.

Now the bales are placed on anelevator that transports them to thehay mows where loose hay was oncestored. The hayfork and the hayforkropes have become history, but theyremind us of an earlier time, whencreative farm kids practiced circustricks in the early summer when thebarn was empty.

For each of the buildings in thefarmstead, a similar history can bedrawn. With the granary, we canthink about grain binders and grainshocks, about threshing machines andthreshing crews. And then, with thecoming of the combine, the threshingmachine disappeared as did the grainbinder. But the grain continued to beharvested—more of it, faster, with lesslabor, and with a larger granaryrequired.

The little corn cribs became nos-talgic structures for many older farm-ers who remember, as children, pick-ing corn by hand, and husking it onthe threshing floor before shoveling itinto the corn crib. And then came thecorn binder and shocks of drying cornmarching across Wisconsin’s cornfields in rows like so many teepees.Corn shredders were a part of thispicture, like the threshing machine,that moved from farm to farm inOctober, during the warm sunnydays, and the cold raw ones, too, forthe corn had to come out of the fieldsbefore first snow. Wagon load afterwagon load of freshly husked cornwas shoveled into the corn cribs, untilthe harvesting was completed. As thecombine replaced the threshingmachine, the corn picker, and laterthe corn combine, replaced the cornbinder and shredder. And the oldwooden slat-sided corn cribs were justtoo small to handle a crop that nowcame in with more than 100 bushelsper acre with the new hybrid cornvarieties.

Farmsteads are historical places,particularly for those who have main-tained the old buildings and foundnew uses for them. We can recountour history as agricultural people byvisiting them, looking at them, under-standing how they were used. It isthus vital that these old buildings bepreserved.

Someone once said, to knowwhere we are going as a people, weshould know where we’ve been. Ourrural buildings are tangible remindersof our past and create an interestingsource of enjoyment for urbandwellers and visitors from non-agri-cultural states.


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Early corn crib, Sauk County.

Only the shell of this old barn remains. The barn boards havebeen removed and the rest forgotten, Sauk County.

Further readingArthur, Eric and Dudley Witney. The

Barn: A Vanishing Landmark in NorthAmerica. Greenwich, CT:New YorkGraphic Society Ltd., 1972.

Auer, Michael J. The Preservation ofHistoric Barns: 20 Preservation Briefs.Washington, DC: National ParkService, 1989.

Carter, Deane G. Farm Buildings. NewYork: John Wiley & Sons, 1922,1928, 1941, 1954.

Clark, James I. Wisconsin Agriculture: TheRise of the Dairy Cow. Madison, WI:State Historical Society of Wisconsin,1956.

Foster, W. A. and Deane G. Carter. FarmBuildings. (2nd ed.) New York: JohnWiley & Sons, 1928.

Halstad, Byron D. Barn Plans andOutbuildings. New York: Orange JuddCompany, 1893.

Harris, Bill. Barns of America. New York:Crescent Books, 1991.

Hart, John Fraser. The Look of The Land.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,1975.

Humstone, Mary. Barn Again! A Guide toRehabilitation of Older Farm Buildings.Des Moines, IA: MeredithCorporation and the National Trustfor Historic Preservation, 1988.

Johnson, Dexter W. Using Old FarmBuildings. National Trust for HistoricPreservation. Washington, DC,National Park Service, InformationSeries, No. 46. 1989.

Noble, Allen G. and Wilhelm, Hubert G.H. (eds.) Barns of the Midwest.Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press,1995.

Schuler, Stanley. American Barns, In aClass by Themselves. Exton, PA:Schiffer Publishing, 1984.

Sloane, Eric. An Age of Barns. New York:Funk & Wagnalls, 1967.

Notes1 See Robert C. Nesbit. The History of

Wisconsin, Vol. III, Urbanization &Industrialization, 1873-1893. Madison,WI: State Historical Society ofWisconsin, 1985, pp. 262-305 for a dis-cussion of ethnic settlement patterns inthe state.

2 State of Wisconsin Blue Book, 1995-1996.Madison, WI: Department ofAdministration, 1995, p. 602, andWisconsin Department ofAdministration, Demographic ServiceCenter, March 1994.

3 Ibid.4 State of Wisconsin Blue Book, 1995-1996,

pp.601-602.5 Ibid.6 M. L. King. Silos: Construction and

Service. St. Paul, MN: Webb PublishingCo., 1913, p. 7.

7 Jerry Apps. Barns of Wisconsin. Madison,WI: Wisconsin Trails, (2nd ed.) 1995,pp. 108-109.

8 Silos: Construction and Service, 1913, p. 24.

Author: Jerry Apps is professor emeritus of adult and continuing education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the authorof more than 20 professional and popular books, among them Barns of Wisconsin.

Photography by Jerry Apps. Illustrations by Alan Pape on page 7 are courtesy of Wisconsin’s Ethnic Settlement Trail, Inc.

Special thanks to Todd Barman, Tom Garver, James Hayward, Chuck Law, Alan Pape, Larry Reed, Bill Tishler, Marsha Weisiger andBarbara Wyatt for reviewing this publication.

Funding for this publication was provided by the Wisconsin Humanities Council, the Pleasant Company and the George L. N. Meyer Foundation.

Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the U.S. Department ofAgriculture, University of Wisconsin–Extension, Cooperative Extension. University of Wisconsin–Extension provides equal opportu-nities in employment and programming, including Title IX and ADA requirements. If you need this information in an alternativeformat, contact the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Programs or call Extension Publications at (608)262-2655.

© 1996 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System doing business as the division of Cooperative Extension ofthe University of Wisconsin–Extension. Send inquiries about copyright permission to: Director, Cooperative Extension Publications,201 Hiram Smith Hall, 1545 Observatory Dr., Madison, WI 53706.

You can obtain copies of this publication from your Wisconsin county Extension office, from Cooperative Extension Publications,Room 170, 630 W. Mifflin Street, Madison, WI 53703, or by calling (608)262-3346. Before publicizing, please check on this publication’s availability.

G3660-2 Giving Old Barns New Life: Wisconsin’s Changing Farmsteads

A southwestern Wisconsin farmstead, Iowa County.

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Giving Old Barns New Life: Wisconsin's Changing Farmstead