RED WING, MN. (AP) – The Dammon barn has held its ground in the Mississippi River bluffs for nearly 90 years.
If the barn could talk, perhaps it would tell of bluffs deforested and forested again, or of the Hoffman boys shooting at crows near its cupola and sometimes hitting the cupola.
Maybe it would tell of how horses gave way to tractors and how wagons were replaced by trucks on nearby Minnesota Highway 61.
Or maybe it would share stories of the family who dared to be different and constructed a banked round barn on their Goodhue County farm.
It was built in 1914 by Henry and Mary Dammon as a dairy barn. It held about 20 cows and had a couple of horse stalls and a calving pen.
A person could enter on ground level on either side of the barn. The front opened to the main floor; the sliding doors around back opened wide enough for a wagon filled with hay.
The Dammon barn is the only remaining round barn in Goodhue County and is one of just a few in the nation. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Round barns were built primarily between the 1880s and the 1920s, said Elaine Kleffman, who now owns the barn with her husband, Rubin. The barns quickly fell out of favor when electricity and mechanization spread throughout the countryside.
Round barns were efficient, Kleffman said. “It was a very footstep-saving way to handle a small herd,” she said.
The silo was in the middle of the structure, where heat from livestock kept its contents from freezing. Next was the manger, and finally the gutter.
The silo foundation is still visible in the barn floor, though the silo and stanchions long ago ceased to be used.
From the 1950s through the 1980s, Earl and Retha Griffith used the barn for their honey processing business, Kleffman said.
Their son, Ronald, built a one-twenty-seventh scale model of the barn complete with barrels of honey, more than 4,000 wood shingles and more than 1,100 |
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limestone blocks from Barn Bluff. It’s now on display in the foyer of the Kleffman’s three-story bracketed country manor house, which serves as the Round Barn Farm Bed and Breakfast and Bread. Guests are treated to homemade bread every morning as part of their four-course breakfast.
The Kleffmans bought the farm in January 1998 to fulfill their dream of opening a bed and breakfast. They spent one summer cleaning out the barn, which hadn’t been used since 1990. They tore down the old farmhouse and built a home based on an 1861 design from architect Samuel Sloan.
They moved into the house last fall and had their first guests in September. There are five themed rooms for couples, and a smokehouse behind the house dates to Civil War days.
On warm weekends, Robin Kleffman bakes bread for guests in the wood-fired hearth oven installed in the limestone smokehouse.
Across the yard, work continues to convert the historic barn into a place for reunions, weddings, and dances. Since it is listed on the National Register, all improvements must be approved by the National Park Service, Kleffman said.
The barn’s lower level is limestone. Twenty-two windows bring light into the barn where Henry Dammon once milked cows.
The true size of the barn isn’t realized until guests step inside and look up. Its diameter and height are 60 feet. Wooden shingles are visible between roof boards and a railing surrounds the hole where the silo once rose into the hayloft.
The round barn has proven to be an attraction to guests – “they all want to see the barn,” Kleffman said – as well as people driving past on Highway 61.
Kleffman said people often pull into the yard and take pictures of the barn.
“So often old barns fall into disrepair because there is no economic use for them anymore,” Kleffman said.
“The B&B made it possible for us to reinvest in the barn.” |