Round Barns

How was the shape invented? That is a question asked by a lot of people. Well there are a couple of theories: one is that farmers with a liking for math thought that a circular shape would enclose more area with less walls and less money. They were right. It was also simplified chores such as cleaning stalls and it had more room for a threshing floor. Another theory is religious: Zealots didn't make them for the other reasons but to eliminate corners for "the devil to hide in." Once you made a round barn you could not add on to your herd or the barn.

There is a round barn on my road in Ferrisburg. It is an 11 sided round barn. And it is able to hold at least 52 cows. Now it is used for storage. When you are in the inside it looks huge, larger than it looks from the outside. In the inside it has a big circular shape the size of a silo that goes all the way to the top of the barn. The people that own the barn , The Hammonds say that it used to be a water trough for the cows. Karl Field was a student at New Hampshire State University in fall of 1911 when his grandmother's Staterl's barn burned in Ferrisburg. Learning of the disaster, Karl prepared designs for a new barn while at college. Borrowing ideas from a University of Illinois bulletin, the plans he sent his grandmother were a round barn.

Linnea Oosterman

Sources: interview John Hammond and articles in Vermont Life magazine