Mother's Stackwood Barn

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As a part of the development of MOTHER'S Eco-Village research center, we began—in the spring of 1981—to gather a small collection of homestead animals. For the most part, the critters are either allowed to roam or are tethered (or fenced) for pasturing in whatever field has reached the appropriate stage of growth. (Our pigs, for example, have spent most of the past summer in the woods, while the sheep and our new cow have been moved around from one pasture to another.)

But when the air grows chill, animals (like people) need protection, and—even in our fairly mild North Carolina climate—a shelter is a necessity for anyone who's keeping livestock. Fortunately for limited operations such as ours, though, a barn can do more than simply serve as an animal house, and the combination postand—beam and stackwood structure we've recently put the finishing touches to is (we think) a good example of do-it-outbuilding design.

MULTIPURPOSE

When we began to sketch out what use we hoped to get out of our barn, we had to face the fact that we'd likely never dedicate the entire structure to the care of one kind of livestock . . . nor would we be storing just one variety of feed. And true to our projections—the new barn has already housed critters ranging from horses to rabbits . . . is now serving as a milkprocessing center ... and holds hay, wheat, buckwheat, anal straw in its loft. Consequently, you should probably consider our multipleduty floor plan as a general example of barn use. Folks who decide to employ the basic construction techniques that we'll outline here may want to arrange their own layouts to suit their particular needs . . . based on the ample footings we've included in our design.

THE STRUCTURE

At 32' X 45', our barn is larger than the average outbuilding but considerably smaller than a full-scale dairy barn. Furthermore, the structure's 10"-deep, 24"-wide footings offer the possibility of dividing the ground floor into stalls as small as 10' X 10', but the interior could easily be left more open (though the posts, which are an integral part of the loadbearing structure, must be positioned as shown).

The 45-foot back wall and one 32-foot end wall are earth-bermed and were erected from 12" concrete block, mor tared and stacked to a height of 10 feet. To withstand the pressure of backfilling a core of every second block was reinforced with two lengths of No. 4 rebar and filled w ith concrete. Before the backhoe pushed the earth against the walls, we tarred the exterior of the block surface, and laid on 15-pound felt and 4-mil polyethylene. In addition, we placed 4"diameter plastic drain tile ( over a 4"thick bed of gravel) against the footers, and poured another 8" of rock atop the ABS pipe to prevent it from plugging with mud.

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