Barn Restoration

Valley View has two historic barns that were built by the ancestors of the Laudeman family in the mid 19th century. The photo above shows the dairy barn as it existed in 2003 after several days of clearing brush away to gain access to the structure. As you can see in the photo, the barn was collapsing and almost a complete loss when we first started working to restore it. This barn is benched into a hillside so that produce from the fields could be nearly red at near constant temperature. It has a hay loft and grapple with rail in the upper ridge beam so that hay could be brought in from the fields and put up for the winter to fee livestock. It is constructed of hand hewn mortise and tenon timbers and has a hand laid stone foundation. The structure was definitely worth saving and after hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars, it was as shown in the photo below. Our long term plan is to use this barn for education programs and potentially as a stage on the elevated floor for outdoor concerts