Catskill Barn Home

These were what were maybe called threshing barns, in which they were raising grain and threshing grain and for which they needed a clear span, a big open span in the barn, so they put in what is called a swing beam. And you find them in these regions probably from about the 1830’s. Here’s the swing beam right here, which is a pretty impressive beam. It’s 34′ long and as you can see, it’s 20 and 1/2 inches wide. There’s 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 put here so 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. And of course this wall wasn’t here at that time, and he would walk around and thresh out grain. So it’s a pretty impressive barn, but let’s look at the rest; of course this was also formed kind of like a truss. There’s this joining piece to a higher-up tie beam. 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 beam.