Click image to enlarge. Shown is a barn near Ashville in St. Clair County. A farm is not a farm without a barn. It is the heart and soul of the complex. Old barns come in all shapes and sizes and range from plain to ornate, common to unique. Most of us have taken for granted that they will always be there, but the barns of yesterday are rapidly vanishing from the rural landscape. Barns located near Alabama’s expanding urban areas are especially vulnerable. And even on working farms, old barns are becoming obsolete as technology demands new structures, and simple “wear and tear” makes new metal barns more desirable than traditional structures. Certainly, however, we ought to preserve enough traditional barn structures to give coming generations a sense of past farm life and landscapes.
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