Round barns captivate me. This one, over 115 years old, is the only surviving round barn in the country & just one of fifty left in the state. The roof & cupola call to mind the interior of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. A cathedral of agriculture, perhaps?

@schuth A round barn? Neat! Is that hay wrapped around the center in the first two photos? I though that was Hebrew in the fourth, and then I could make out the word “duck”, so I guess not ;-)

is the only surviving round barn in the country & just one of fifty left in the state.

I presume that’s supposed to be county, not country?

@smokey That structure in the center is actually the silo. Agricultural scientists of that era advocated for round barns in part because a central silo was better insulated, guarding against silage spoilage. Interesting that you thought it might be hay: early modern hay baling was actually a factor in the decline of round barns, which didn’t accommodate mechanically-produced rectangular bales efficiently.

Good catch on “country” vs. “county” (thanks, Autocorrect). I’ve amended the post; we’ll see if I got it in time to be reflected in the timeline.

@smokey The writing isn’t easy to read at first, even in person. Those are the signatures of the barn’s builders in the mortar for the silo: Lewis Lendborg & Wm Duckert (I think that’s the second surname).

@schuth Nice stuff. And now, to continue your theme, most silage is produced in round bales rather than in big silage clamps.

@jeremycherfas Too bad mechanical round baling technology came too late for the round barn boom! Both forms are really striking.

@schuth Ah, I see; that’s stone-and-mortar or the like, with a strand of lights for good measure! I originally read the post on the phone, so even zooming in it was hard to tell what I was seeing (which makes my making out of “Duck” all the more surprising!)

I didn’t realize that early mechanical hay-baling produced square bales, as I’ve only ever seen the current round kind, and roundish haystack to round hay bale seemed like a logical progression ;-)

@smokey I don’t know enough about the technology to understand exactly why mechanical round baling lagged rectangular versions. Farmers do love to keep old equipment running; I don’t miss the summer days I spent catching, throwing, & stacking rectangular bales in a hayloft.

@schuth Ouf, I imagine not! Now you’ve got me trying to remember if my aunt and uncle’s barn had a hayloft—I got the barn tour when I was very young and the barn was in need of much repair, and I can count on one hand the number of times I was inside it in the decades since.

@jeremycherfas I’ll have to look out for that storage technique. I’m mostly accustomed to seeing solitary round bales scattered around in a big field as I drive past on the highway.

@jeremycherfas @schuth Interesting. I grew up in Europe and was used to seeing mostly (or only) round bales - small and big. It wasn't until I moved to North America I started seeing a lot more square bales.

Googling "round vs square bales" yields (to me) suprisingly lot of heated discussion on what's better :) Apparently round bales require less people to produce them, and square bales have to dry longer. However, round bales are larger and require more work to stack, or are too large for smaller farms.

Also interesting

Now I know more about bales and bailing than I ever thought I would.

@oyam I’m glad there are round & square bale partisans! It’s ultimately an inconsequential thing to be a hardliner about, but I imagine it’s tied up in closely-held agricultural tradition, senses of landscape, & things I can’t begin to guess at from the outside.

@oyam I’m reminded that the die cast toy tractor & baler set I had when I was young had a round baler. I wish I had a clearer memory of how most farmers in the area I grew up were round baling during that period.

@oyam @jeremycherfas @smokey This has been one of the most unexpected conversations I’ve had online in years. Thank you for being part of it!

@oyam @schuth The question of too big to handle is really interesting. In the UK for example, people with a small paddock and a couple of ponies make it lucrative for farmers to keep a small, old baler working because they can charge silly money for small bales of hay that a person can manage by hand.

@schuth It reminds me a bit of after-hours grad school conversations—except here we managed to completely avoid the Ottoman Empire!

@schuth @oyam @jeremycherfas To return to this subject (since this conversation was one I linked to when @rnv first asked for what became the weekly recaps, which conversation I just looked up): I noticed earlier this month on our trip to the western NC mountains one farmer producing hay in square bales, whereas I had only ever seen round bales in the area before. I guess that farmer has a very old baler!

@smokey

when @rnv first asked for what became the weekly recaps

Hey, so I did! I’d forgotten that.

@rnv Yep, you’re sort of the godfather of the recaps :-)

@smokey I believe that there are modern machines that produce very large blocky bales. Harder to make and easier to stack.

@jeremycherfas These were much smaller than the round bales common in the area, so I’m guessing it was not one of those modern machines.

@smokey I reckon you are right.