They sprouted during our agrarian past, a time when rolling fields fringed by stone walls blanketed Fairfield County. And theirs was a pragmatic, no-frills history of hand-hewn posts and beams, random-width board siding and dirt floors. After all, these barns, where farmers hoisted hay high on a winch to storied lofts, were built to house animals and farm equipment. Aesthetic detail could wait.
Today, like architectural ancestors, they dot our landscape. Some, more than a century old and on mortarless stone foundations, stand proud and defiant against termites and time. Others appear to have buckled under the elements, waiting for nature’s final gust of wind or a dramatic send-off from a pall of snow.