Building a Future by Saving the Past

“I need a barn”. A simple statement, sure. Doesn’t every young boy need a place to store his ever-growing collection of old farm equipment? Perhaps not so often today, but Jack Deford of Casstown relishes his old-fashioned leanings. “I’ve taken over 20,000 photographs of farms, barns, and equipment in the area, and every time I see one falling down I want to save it.”

Jack is one of the newer vendors on Miami County Locally Grown, the Virtual Farmer’s Market based in Troy. A focus of the market is to foster collaboration, whether with customers and local businesses or simply among vendors themselves, believing cooperation will improve as well as stimulate the local economy and community. Whether sharing expertise, recipes, or sourdough, vendors are constantly finding ways to work together.

So when Jack mentioned his need, fellow vendors Lee Ruff and Matt Buehler were on hand to step in and offer their help.

Lee is a full-time farmer on his End of the Road Farm in Fletcher. When he heard fellow vendor Jack wanted to build a barn, Lee suggested he simply find an old one in need of a home, take it down piece by piece, and rebuild it on the family homestead. It takes a certain confidence and craziness to make that sound doable, yet Lee speaks from experience. His biannual winter project the past ten years has been doing just that – taking down a local piece of agricultural antiquity and bringing it home, to be rebuilt in it’s entirety, or just used for pieces and parts to repair his existing structures.

The required tools? A hammer, a 3 ft pry bar, an 8 pound sledge, a 5/8th steel rod, an occasional come-a-long, and a 16 ft trailer.

How’s this for determination? In two days and 16 work hours, he took down and loaded a 21’x17’ pig house with attached corn crib, that became his “new” tractor garage. With plenty to occupy his days and nights, including his young family, 21 acre farm, crops as diverse as spelt, sorghum, and produce, not to mention their dairy cow, pigs, and chickens, Lee only has a small window of time to devote to his infrastructure projects – especially when pulling nails can become a three week job.

A 40’x60’ barn, 20’ tall, is the largest structure Lee has so far taken down himself.

When questioned about his tools and their role, Lee explains, “You can’t just whack on it with a hammer – you’ll wreck it! This job requires finesse. It has to come apart in good enough shape to go back together. Every board you break is one you can’t reuse as you should.” So precision and patience are as important as prowess and power.

Enter Matt Buehler, the younger half of Phil Buehler and Matt Buehler Farms. With his dad, Phil, they supply the Virtual Market with their ever-popular, delicious pork. And Matt just happened to be the right guy at the right time. As a roofing contractor, he comes into contact with many area farmers. Matt put Lee and Jack in touch with a man who ended up having not one, but three barns he was going to burn, making room for a more open structure that’d be conducive to his modern farm equipment.

But thankfully not before others could use the materials! Inside the barns Jack discovered old wagon sides he could use to finish rebuilding the wagon he was restoring. And he found himself in a classic case of “Be careful what you wish for”… it was so short a time frame in which the farmer needed the buildings taken down before his new structure was ready to go up. Although Jack wasn’t ready to immediately pour footers and take one of these structures home, he did look forward to learning what works for Lee, who is currently bringing the first of the three barns home as quickly as possible. Lee assured Jack there were more buildings than he could ever want just waiting for him when the time was right in the future.

When asked why he does this brutal hard work, Lee replied, “Because I picture the men who built those barns with their wooden ladders and axes, saws and hammers, taking a drink from their stoneware jugs… it’s a terrible shame to let such hard work go to rot, or to waste. You can see in the beams the pride those men would’ve felt standing in the finished barn. They’re works of art, pieces of our history, and I’d save every one if I could.”

The chickens who lived there, the pigs who were fed out there, the horses with their harness all shined up on the wall, the cows who were milked there… each of these old barns are full of stories, and when they’re saved by appreciative folks like Lee and Jack, they’ll continue to share both their worth and stories for generations to come.