1241 Mickle Hollow Barn

Here we are on a beautiful late summer day, with temperatures in the low 70ds, in Cobbolskill New York. That's the town behind us and we just looked at a barn over the hill there. Cobbolskill is really named after the Cobbles Kill, and in Dutch, the word "kill" means a stream, so you find things like the Polennskill the Tennikill the Cobbilleskill or the Cobble stream, so it's probably a stream that had cobble-like stones in it. It's an old Dutch town out on highway 88 in central New York. You can see a quarry in the distance and the beginning of the Aderandact mountains, and not far from here the Erie Canal came through. Just north of here was America's supper highway, going out to the West, in 1825. When that happened of course, the agriculture in that area flourished, and sure enough, the barn we just looked at was right over the hill here. You can imagine them clearing and farming this steep country back in the 1800ds with there horses. It was a bit of a challenge, but again it was some very profitable farming at the time. Down there is a beautiful homestead in the valley. The name of the family maybe was what we saw on some boards, Mickle. Probably a German name. There it is, that's the barn we were just in and the homestead down there and the beautiful setting in this valley across the mountain from the town of Cobbleskill. Here's a little hand made ladder, course originally there was a horizontal girt right here and the ladder sat on that. But we'll restore that ladder back into place because you can see it was hand made. And can you imagine the years spent by boys climbing up there into hay mow? But we'll see another little feature look in the crouch of the brace right there. See that wedge put up in there, that was the last rung. No one wanted to put their foot down in that wedge at a 45 degree angle and get there foot stuck in there all the time, so they put a wedge in there to flatten it out. They flattened it out right there so you could step on top of the tie beam. There's a rung way up there 'cause you see, when they built the barn, they figured to put a top rung up in there, so in a sense, that's a step there. A real-little hand made ladder with six rungs and you're over the top and into the mow. That's how it was built. It's kind of an interesting little feature in the barn. This is a latter addition here of just 2 by's so we'll take that out. Let's take another look at this nice swing beam. When one forgets his tape measure you have to improvise here. Let's measure the thickness of this beam, it's 1' 9". It's at least a 21inches wide swing beam. It's quite a beam, it's massive. Can you imagine the tree that beam was cut from? Let me just check underneath here. We've got 11 1/2 inches under there. That beam was once a tree that was hewn and felled, and brought down to this barn, pulled down by oxen. It's an incredibly  big beam. It's a beautiful beam and its got some good height under it. Here's a lawn mower before the days of push lawn mowers. It's a scythe and you would carry it on your hip with your sharpening stone next to it. That way you could run your blade over the stone to keep it sharp. It's still got an edge to it, but you can imagine the amount of hay this scythe cut.

Here we are in Ornervil New York and have a real interesting barn here this morning. It's a swing been barn. That's what I'm standing under right here. And these were also maybe what's called threshing barns, in which they were raising grain and threshing grain and for which they needed a clears span a big open area in the barn so they put in what's called a swing beam.  And you find them in these regions probably from about the 1830's and here's the swing beam right here which is a pretty impressive beam. It's 34 feet long, and as you can see it's almost 20 1/2 inches wide. And there is a hole bored in the beam. For which they would probably put a, it's wallowed out kind of, so they had a removable iron rod they'd put here. They could walk an ox in a circle in the barn and throw down sheaves of grain under his hooves and he would thresh them out as opposed to flailing them by hand you could have your ox walk in a circle in the barn. Course this wall wasn't here at that time. And he would walk around and thresh out grain. So its a pretty impressive barn. Now let's take a look at the rest. Course this is also kind of formed like a truss here. There's this joining piece to a higher up I beam. Here it is, the name of the original farmer, Lorey Vickoler Mickle, Urin Michel Nickel Hollow here's a little interesting feature was the rang for tying the rains of your horse up. Here's thats interesting because it shows that this latter was original That rung, that hand drawn-knifed rung up there could not be put in there, set in there, unless the barn was apart really. So this is original up in here and they figured for this latter original. We'll restore this part. We'll restore this latter to how it should be but its all, its not turned on the lathe they are all done with a draw knife. See some beautiful hand hewn hemlock timbers 12 by almost 10ns Lateral girts around the outside. A 12 inch tie beam, nice tie beam up there. Very heavy barn very well built beautifully barn. Course all this wood up here this tow by and ply wood wasn't there it was open overhead. You could drove a hay wagon right in here and pitch hay up on either side onto polls up there and the sapling up there but I'll take a walk up above. A very good conditioned barn. Its got hand hewn rafters up there. All hand hewn rafters. The barn is 46 feet long so the plats are 46 feet one piece plates and each plate is from one tree. And they have 46 straight feet out of a tree, it's pretty impressive. Beautiful barn. Wonderful barn had a lather wood hay track put in it. Here we are up in what is called the hay mow, the hay loft of the barn. It's a lots of room up here. It's got some real nice hight. I'll get in here real close and measure above the top of the tie beam to the top of the post is 65 1/2 inches right there. Lots of hight. 8 1/4 inch plates huge plates, 8 X 10 plates. Very nice plates. Long braces long sawn braces. The purling plates up high up here are also 8 X 10 and the queen posts of which there are 8 in here, they don't have queen posts on that fifth bent which is very typical not to do that. But right here the queen post running this direction are 9 by 7 1/2. Tall queen posts 9, 10, 11, 12 pair of rafters on 50 inch centers on that one, lets try over here. These are on 49 inch. About just over 4 foot centers, on the rafters and the rafters are nice and heavy they are 6 1/4 deep and their width here is 6 and of course they're all hand hewn their whole length. Those are beautiful posts and there's a raising hole. Very interesting, kind of interesting that the raising hole here wasn't bored all the way through. Says something it's a mystery what raising holes were used for. The swing beam is a beautiful beam, an enormous beam. They don't come much bigger than that ever in an English barn. It's a huge, huge beam. Over all it's a beautiful barn, wonderful barn, excellent condition it's had a good roof. All hand hewn except sawn oak braces hand hew easter white pine looks like some hemlock too and conifer. Very good condition even sill system till intact in this barn which is unusual. Very good condition barn. Built in with these partitions for horse stalls, but it's in excellent condition, the barn. Very good. I really see hardly a repair in it.