We tore down the original barn on the farm in 1975. Built about 1919, it had been added onto, both lengthwise and a lean-to milking barn. The hip-roofed barn had sagged, partly due to the unanticipated weight of a full loft of small square bales. Its thin shingles were blowing off in each big windstorm. It looked old and weathered.
A collective of several young people and two leaders had moved into our small neighbouring town of Holden. They were part of some kind of rehabilitation experiment. They placed an ad in the local newspaper offering their services for jobs such as bale hauling, yard cleanup jobs and exterior painting. They called themselves The Holden Farm Society.
I called them up and one of their leaders and two young men came over to the farm and looked the barn over. They were very interested in the job of dismantling the barn, salvaging as much as possible of the 2x4s, larger planks and the siding, as I requested. I thought I could make some kind of smaller building out of the salvaged lumber.
We struck a deal: $150 up front, $150 at about half way, $150 at completion, I believe it was.
They started very soon after, a group of about six (one or two were girls) and a leader. They attacked the barn with vigour and enthusiasm, tearing off the siding.
We soon discovered that the 2x4s and the siding were fir. They split easily as they were removed and only a few were reusable.
After a few days, there was a large and rapidly growing pile of scrap lumber. The reusable pile was much smaller, but neatly stacked with the nails removed.
Also after a few days, their enthusiasm waned, they missed a few days, worked a day or two, missed more days.
I realized that they probably should have started at the top, removed the shingles and the spaced board strapping, then the hayloft floor and finally the siding and 2x4 studs.
It was clear that not very much of the old barn was going to be salvaged. When they felt they were about half done and were paid, their enthusiasm waned even more.
We pulled down the remaining skeleton of the barn with the tractor to enable the dismantlers to work from the ground. A week or so later, with scattered piles of lumber covering a large area, they felt they were done. I paid them, glad no one had been injured in the process that had not gone at all like I had anticipated.
I pushed all the scrap lumber into a large pile. We burned it safely a few weeks later. The small pile of salvaged material was moved somewhere out of sight. I eventually built a small chop bin, on skids, for the rolled grain we fed to the bulls during the winter.
I also built a good-sized dog house.
I cleaned up and levelled the old barn site. The yard looked different—sort of empty.
There were a lot of vacant, abandoned farm sites during that time as older farmers retired and moved to larger towns like Vegreville or Camrose. Younger, progressive farmers were increasing their farm size and did not require the older empty farm buildings.
We had not planned to build a new barn for an aesthetic, traditional farm look, but I kept my eyes open for barns in our area that weren’t too big and could possibly be moved.
A new farmer to the Holden area, named Chabot, bought the Joe and Vicki Hendel farm, a quarter section with a house and barn southeast of Holden. Mr. Chabot had the smaller, newer house moved to a lot in Camrose and sold it. My friend Lawrence Hurum told me there was a nice little barn left on the farm that he thought could be moved. Together we met at the farm and looked over the barn.
The barn was 20’ x 26’, built in 1950 by a local carpenter, Fred Laskoski. It was carefully and strongly constructed. It had a round roof made above curved, laminated 1x4s. It had a sturdy ladder leading up to the small hayloft. It still had roomy stalls for four teams of horses, even though horses were quickly becoming obsolete in the fifties. It had lots of windows for its size.
The barn appealed to me. Lawrence felt it could be moved on skids with a tractor, in the winter.
I went to see Mr. Chabot, who lived on the former Steve Kondrat farm, and asked if the barn on the Hendel place was for sale.
“Yes it is,” he replied, “$1,400 for the barn.”
I don’t know how he arrived at that number, but I didn’t haggle about the price. I gave him a cheque for $1,400 and said the barn would be moved off the yard before the spring of 1976. That was in the late fall of 1975.
We shook hands. There were no papers signed.
Lawrence and I went to the Hendel farm quite a few times in the next month or so after our daily winter chores were done. We got 2x4s and 2x6s from the lumber yard in Holden. We angle-braced all the corners and x-braced both ends of the barn. We got two used 35-foot power poles from the local Calgary Power stockpile in Holden. I think they delivered them to the barn site free of charge.
Lawrence, as a young man, had helped with the moving of a considerably larger barn his father had purchased, to his present farm. Lawrence knew what he was doing.
We got jacks, raised the barn, got the power poles under it. We had made four 6x6 beams of laminated 2x6s for the barn to rest on, with the beams across the power poles.
We had cut notches, with a chainsaw, under the thicker end of the poles for the towing cable to go into. We angle-cut the fronts of the poles to act as sleigh runners. We added a few more braces. Lawrence said the barn was ready to move.
He also said we needed a good fresh snowfall to make the barn slide more easily on the approximately four miles of gravel road. We had to wait, as it had been an open winter, with only a few skiffs of snow to that point.
Four inches of snow fell on January 16, 1976.
We moved the barn on January 17th.
It was cold and crisp but our older 5020 John Deere tractor started fine. The Calgary Power boys were told of the move and were ready where we crossed under the lines, in case they needed to lift the live wires.
I drove the tractor; Lawrence followed in his truck. The tractor pulled the barn easily but I could see the road gravel moving under the snow at the front of the skids.
The Calgary Power boys waited at each crossing under the power lines, I think there were three or four. They watched and signalled as I inched toward the lines. None needed to be lifted.
At the last crossing, I waved and they waved back before they returned to Holden. They did not send me a bill for their services.
I could easily go about five miles per hour on the four-mile trip to our farm.
Things were going smoothly. We were less than half a mile from home. It was early afternoon.
Suddenly there was a screeching sound and the barn stopped moving. I stopped too.
The towing cable under one of the skids had broken, worn through by the gravel as the pole skid itself wore down, also by the gravel.
Leaving the barn in the middle of the road, we drove to our farm. We got the chainsaw and a jack, drove back to the barn then jacked the skid up high enough to cut another groove for the now-shorter cable. That took about an hour, but we still got the barn home before dark.
In August 1976, while we were building an addition to our house, we also made the forms for the footings and floor of the barn. After the cement was poured and hard, we pulled the barn into place and fastened it down.
I made a small storage bin for rolled grain in part of one stall and a tack room in part of another. I fixed up a cow stall with a stanchion for our milk cow. A double horse stall became the storage area for our farm Honda trike ATV and the trailer I built for it.
In the hayloft I made a single, heavy rope swing with a large knot to sit on for Dale and Joyce (and later Sheena) and their friends and cousins. They launched themselves from correctly placed hay bales towards the outside hayloft door. There were a lot of swings made on that rope, then and since then!
Our nephew Michael and his wife Cheryl now own the farm. They covered the weathered wood siding entirely with red and white steel.
I got lettering on the east side of the barn made in Coquitlam and mounted it after the red steel siding job was completed.
The little red barn made the farm look traditional.