Barns of Connecticut. Markham Starr

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      Floor heights often vary in older barns.

      In addition to varying floor heights, irregular construction is also seen in barn lofts, which did not need to be built as permanent structures. Unlike the second floor of the home in which the family lived and worked, where solid footing underneath was essential, barns were built with flexibility in mind. Many farmers used temporary flooring to store summer harvests. Rather than framing the lofts with full floor joists and covering them with solid decking to make a loft floor, they often employed poles made from saplings to span the distance between girts (supports that run horizontally from post to post). Enough loose boards were placed across this quick joist system to allow farmers to load the ever-rising pile of hay. Less expensive to build, this system allowed for better crop ventilation and added flexibility should the volume of any particular crop vary — although the arrangement certainly made working on top of them all the more interesting. Temporary floors were simply placed where desired and as necessity dictated. Additionally, this loose arrangement allowed farmers to take full advantage of the volume of dry space available. If you imagine trying to pitch loose hay into a room with a fixed ceiling, it isn’t hard to see that the ceiling will quickly get in the way of the work. If, however, you pitch the hay as high as you can and then put the ceiling into place, the work becomes much easier. Much later, farmers invented an overhead trolley system running the length of the barn. A large pair of tongs, or horse forks as they were called, hung from this trolley by block and tackle. The forks could be lowered to pick up huge loads of loose hay from a wagon, then raised to any level and dumped onto mows where desired. Here again, having an open structure was essential. Even later, some farmers built barns into hillsides, which allowed them to drive their wagons in near the top of the barn. They simply tossed the hay downward to fill the mow, eliminating much of the physical effort. With the invention, well into the twentieth century, of hay balers priced for the small farm, permanent floors were often added to older barns or built into new structures, since uniformly shaped bales ended the need for open lofts.

       Materials Used to Construct Timber-Framed Barns

      The earliest barns were, by necessity, constructed of timbers hewn entirely by hand. In fact, hewn timbers would remain the standard well into the 1800s, depending upon location. Even as water-powered saw mills began to dot the landscape, the frame’s heavy timber was generally hewn into rectangular form by hand — for both economic and logistical reasons. It took simply too much effort to transport heavy logs to distant mills for the four cuts needed to transform them into rectangular forms, before then shipping them back to the building site. Given the weights involved, and the need to move logs with animal power over primitive roads, hewing a timber on the spot and moving it just once to the building’s location saved labor overall. This would remain the case until the advent of balloon construction, in which buildings were made entirely of sawn timber. As one might expect, sawn timber began to make its way into timber-framed barns as saw mills opened throughout New England. Smaller timbers used in the frame, such as wind braces, joists, and eventually common rafters, were the first to replace pieces once hewn. Despite the spread of mills, carpenters preferred to use hewn timbers right into the late nineteenth century.

      Until water-powered saw mills could be built locally, planking used for siding, flooring, or as roofers on the barn was ripped by hand. These boards were sawn from logs by what were known as pit saws. Logs were placed on scaffolding, or above a pit dug into the earth. This setup allowed sawyers to use a long, two-handled saw. A person standing on top of the log would both guide the saw blade and pull up, while the person below pulled the blade back down. Together, they ripped the log into planks. As can be imagined, this was a long and laborious task, and another reason why flooring was not used unless entirely necessary. Although water-powered mills with gangs of saw blades eventually took this job out of the pit, planks nevertheless continued to represent a serious financial investment.

      The construction of saw mills was an important advancement for any village, as it allowed for the provision of the most essential raw material of the time: lumber. These mills were, of course, more likely to be built along the coast, with its greater population and ready access to materials from abroad.