Nibley-owned barn packs a lot of history in its walls

The historic Nibley barn. / Photo by Shannon K. Johnson

By Shannon K. Johnson

April 23, 2007 | It doesn't look like much with its gray and auburn boards that have warped as the barn has stood for more than 100 years.

The barn looks almost lopsided, but its vast walls still slide on its rusty tracks.

It has become a landmark, and though the lands look almost empty now with only a few cattle wandering in a back field, because of its history the barn was recently purchased by the city of Nibley.

When it was first built, the barn was a small lean-to. The wall that now faces the inside of the barn is has a trough on opposite side. Instead of solid plank walls, this wall has slots that are designed for the cattle to slip their heads through.

Each slot, or stanch, is made up of two boards: one that is anchored and the second that hinges on a bolt. This single, rough-cut board is the hinged upright that locks them into place.

Dee Gibbons was the most recent owner of the barn and its land. He purchased it in 1981.

As a teenager, he came to work on the farm. Back in those days it was a dairy farm. So in that old lean-to cows would be herded in carefully, screened for infection and milked.

In those days the screening meant milking each teat over a screen that sat atop a small cup and if any thing congealed on the screen it meant there was an infection, said Gibbons.

Running a dairy farm was a more intense process then it is today. Not only are the cows milked once or twice a day, the grain that feeds the cows is grown on the surrounding land. Chickens, pigs and horses are also raised on the farm.

When the barn was fully functioning, the farmer would grow hay for the cattle. Hay grows quickly and needs to be harvested a few times a season. To harvest the hay a cutter would cut the tall, leafy blades and leave them lying in the field allowing the hay to cure.

Then two men working with pitchforks would walk side by side and fold the hay into rows and then back again making piles.

Finally a wagon would be driven between the rows and those same men would stab long pitchforks into the hay and toss it over their heads.

Gibbons, as a teenager, would stomp the hay into the wagon.

"You can carry more hay that way. I'd use to spread the hay around with my pitchfork, but every once in a while I'd fall in a hole."

The wagon would then pull up to the side of the barn and a pulley would slide out on a track and lower a hinged device with interlocking curved hooks, it is almost like salad tongs, and the fork would grasps the hay and pull it up out of the wagon.

It would then slide the fork with the hay along a track that runs along the roof of the barn. A man inside would pull a small trip rope and the fork would open and dump the hay in a pile in the center of the barn.

After having spread out this hay the cycle would continue until the hay reach almost two storied completely filling the large room.

Most of the barn was devoted to storage for the hay with only a small coral for calves and the area that was once a lean to for the milking.

The final part of the barn was also used for storage it is a he eight-sided grain silo the entire structure has never leaked.

A silo is a storage center for corn that has been run through a chopper and is essentially blown into the wooden tower.

The grain is then smoothed so the silo can fill evenly where the corn is left inside the corn ferments.

"Essentially the silo is holding a tower of water," said Gibbons.

The two by fours that make up the walls of the silo are rough cut and lay so they are only two inches tall.

To open the silo a series of doors that lock into place run up one wall of the silo. To open the door you have push the door on its wide looped hinges in.

The rusty hinges loop out and they serve as a ladder to allow a worker to climb to the highest window and drop the feed to a wheel barrow down below.

Nibley did not just purchase a barn though it bought the surrounding land and a few of the neighboring buildings.

One building was a tractor shed constructed via the simple process of nailing a rough frame together.

"This is the way you make a building when you have nothing," said Gibbons.

Four posts make up the corners with three boards connecting three of the four walls, a second floor is made by the simply process of laying them on top of the top boards which run along all four walls.

The building has the same gray wood that the barn does and the walls are simply rough cut planks nailed directly to a frame.

Right next to the tractor shed is a more domestic looking structure it is an old house that had been moved from Millville.

Years ago it was converted into a shop for farm equipment repair.

The house is small with what was once friendly plaster walls with insulation and even glass windows, but it has not been lived in for years.

Though the historic barns value is obvious it having been featured in a book about barns, the city of Nibley does not really know what they are going to do with the old structure now.

Making the area a park or a 4-H club headquarters are some of the ideas discussed at council meetings, but now the barn is getting cleaned by the city.

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