Barn RaisingBarn Raising
The heart of every working farm is its barn. It provides shelter for animals, storage for their feed, and a place to keep tools and machinery. When the barn on Jacob's farm burns down, Jacob's father knows he has to replace it -- and quickly.
In the Amish community a barn is built in a day. Early in the morning friends and neighbors gather to make and raise the frames of the barn, to roof it, and to add the siding. By evening a new building rises from the landscape. Once again the animals have shelter, their feed is stored, and the farm equipment is in place.
Craig Brown's vigorous, folkloric-style paintings convey so much more than an intricate, step-by-step process of barn construction. Shining through is a spirit of generosity, cooperation, and neighborly concern that is at the core of every barn raising.
When Jacob's family barn burns to the ground, he turns to his friends and neighbors in his Amish community to help him build another, thus in the course of one day, people from miles around lend a hand and work as a unit to get the important job done.
An Amish community gathers to erect a barn in one day, and finishes in time for the owner's cows to be milked there that very evening.
From the community