saved the barn from ruin<\/a> before it passed a point of no return after heavy rain in 1998.<\/p>\nThe barn\u2019s story is one of 10 across the commonwealth that will be featured in the Historic Barn and Farm Foundation\u2019s upcoming documentary, \u201cPA Barn 250.\u201d Created in part to honor the nation\u2019s 250th birthday and in part to highlight its oldest \u2014 and often most overlooked \u2014 barns, it includes several structures more than 250 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love barns and I love this project,\u201d deLeon said. \u201cTo me, they\u2019re magnificent castles in the field. They\u2019re the heart of the family. When families immigrated over here on bare land, they had to build something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you explain that to the next generation if it\u2019s not there anymore?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
The documentary, which is expected to be available at no cost on YouTube at the end of the summer, will be split into episodes, each focused on a different aspect of barns, including the settlers who built them, building style, decoration and preservation. Interviews with local historians, experts and present-day residents will make up much of the series.<\/p>\n
The project\u2019s creators said they hope the final product will give viewers an appreciation of, or at least an acquaintance with, the barns around them.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, when you drive down the road or on the turnpike, and you see a barn in the distance or whooshing by, you\u2019ll know a little bit more about it,\u201d said Curtis Vreeland, the primary organizer of the documentary and a member of the Historic Barn and Farm Foundation\u2019s board.<\/p>\n
Made in collaboration with several student interns from Franklin & Marshall College, the project\u2019s creators also hope the documentary might generate some barn-related enthusiasm in a younger crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all kind of bottled up in people who are 70 years old,\u201d Vreeland said.<\/p>\n
Eli Gregoris, a Franklin & Marshall senior who worked as the documentary\u2019s interviewer and script writer while interning with the foundation, said the project combined his passions for storytelling and history.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we want to know where we\u2019re going, we have to learn what\u2019s influencing us,\u201d Gregoris said. \u201cWhat\u2019s the knowledge you want to pass on?\u201d<\/p>\n
The senior said he didn\u2019t have much barn-related knowledge when he joined the team, though Vreeland called this one of his biggest strengths.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re asking questions which are very astute, and ones which I wouldn\u2019t have thought of,\u201d Vreeland said of the interns. \u201cThat viewpoint from a beginner is going to make the documentary more approachable to laypeople.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who love history and love agriculture, they were going to watch it anyway,\u201d Gregoris said. \u201cWe want other people involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 10 barns are from five counties. There\u2019s not much left of some, like the Heller Barn, while others still boast livestock residents and an intact roof.<\/p>\n
In some ways, Vreeland said, barns can function as a \u201ccanary in a coal mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you see a barn well maintained, then you know that the local agricultural community is somewhat \u2026 prosperous,\u201d he said. \u201cYou see one falling down, that land may have been sold to a corporation who\u2019s getting ready to put in a warehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vreeland has a barn dating to the Civil War on his property. His day job planning the recovery of disaster-struck communities at the Federal Emergency Management Agency doesn\u2019t leave much time for farming, though the barn still sees use. Vintage automobiles are stores on its upper floor, which was made to bear heavy loads.<\/p>\n
When the idea for the documentary struck him, Vreeland only planned to include barns that predated the Revolutionary War, but he said the team quickly felt it was excluding other interesting barns.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t just stop at the Revolutionary War,\u201d deLeon said. \u201cThe country didn\u2019t stop at the Revolutionary War. We went through all the other wars to become who we are today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team is slated to complete filming for the documentary in mid-April; editing comes next, and with hundreds of hours of footage, Vreeland said the team will stay busy through release.<\/p>\n
Elisabeth Seidel is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n
HIGHLIGHTED BARNS<\/p>\n
Bartram\u2019s Garden Barn \u2014 Philadelphia<\/p>\n
Beiler Barn \u2014 Martic, Lancaster County<\/p>\n
Heckler Barn \u2014 Lower Salford, Montgomery County<\/p>\n
Heller Barn \u2014 Lower Saucon, Northampton County<\/p>\n
Hoffman Barn \u2014 Nockamixon, Bucks County<\/p>\n
Isaac Long Barn \u2014 Lancaster, Lancaster County<\/p>\n
Kepler Barn \u2014 Ferguson, Centre County<\/p>\n
Landis Valley Log Barn \u2014 Lancaster, Lancaster County<\/p>\n
Pennypacker Mills Barn \u2014 Perkiomen, Montgomery County<\/p>\n
Stenton Manor Barn \u2014 Philadelphia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The roof is gone. The timber frame is gone. A couple of walls are gone, too. And yet,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,182,205,139,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-164410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-local-news","tag-lower-saucon-township","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}