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The Round Barn Llama Farm!

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In 1910, carpenters were paid 25 cents to 35 cents an hour for exactly 8 hours of work a day, Monday through Saturday, 6 days a week, plus room, board. Room was sleeping in the barn itself or one of the other outbuildings; Board was 3 meals (Breakfast @ 5 AM, Lunch @ 2 PM, and Dinner @ 8 PM.).

Typically, a crew could build 3 to 4 barns a season. Season ran from April to October. Material for the barn, was furnished by farmer, i.e. nail kegs, wood, shingles, siding, dimensional framing lumber, and the foundation walls and silo were already poured or built before the carpenters came (see photo of carpenters below). The farmer usually set up a sawmill the previous year and had all the lumber cut to the dimensions required, stacked and cured.

A milk house is attached to the west side of the first floor. Originally, the milk room probably was located under the west ramp. The hayloft on the second floor has horizontal sawn cedar siding on its 22-foot walls. The siding was soaked in water to enable the wood to flex for fitting on a curved wall. The west ramp drive, as well as the north ramp to the haymow, is an earthen berm with concrete fieldstone walls and leads to large drive-through doors. Each ramp opening has 2 doors 8 feet wide and 15 feet tall.

This is the Description of Our Round Barn (As seen above)

The first floor foundation and silo are poured concrete walls, a foot thick, with a self-supporting two-hip pitched gambrel roof.

The barn has a diameter of 60 feet including a silo of 15 feet across in diameter at its center, which is 58 foot tall with a 10-foot span from top of the silo to the roof.

Thus, the true height of the barn finishes at 68 feet tall.

Last, but not least, we patched the roof of its major holes and shingled it in small places until money can be raised for a new roof. The new roof will require 44 square of shingles and a pull off of two layers of existing material, not to mention a roofer experienced in round buildings.

In 1995, a ten-year restoration plan for the barn began. This plan is based on progress being made each year. First, we brought in a skid loader to remove over 20 tons of manure from the first floor - it was up to 3 to 4 feet deep in places. Once that was removed, reconstruction of a 22-foot concerte section of ground floor wall could begin, which had fallen out over the last 20 years.

The loss of the support on that section of wall had resulted in the barn leaning to the east in a precipitous direction. Once the wall was replaced and intact, we were able to stabilize the barn and square it up.

When entering from the west ramp, overhead is a circular track on the ceiling in the haymow. This was part of an inventive rope and pully system, which used hayforks (still there) to draw hay up into the haymow from a horse wagon pulled up the central drive into the mow itself. After the wagons were empty, they exited the barn using the north ramp. The mow can hold 45 tons of loose hay.

Up against the silo are 3 feeding chutes used to drop hay and feed to the animals below. Its original purpose was a dairy barn that would handle feed and hay for 32 cows for a long 9 months each year.

Present Owners:

Bob & Kathy Frydenlund

Style:

True Round Barn

Year Built:

Circa 1914

Owner when built: Nicholas Lundgren, Owner from 1900-1921

Designer/Architect: Wilber J. Fraser, Chief in Dairy Farming

Builders: ***

John B. Finstad & Crew: George & Carl B. Finstad, Radon & Christofer Lien, Melvin Overby, and Oscar Anderson (Probably the builders of our barn).

NOTE:

The most well known builders of Round Barns in Pierce, St. Croix, and Barron Counties were:

*Erin Nelson and sons Walter, Victor & crew: Oscar Nelson, (no relation; well-known promoter of round barns) John Holden, Otto Ecklund, and sometimes Erin's father, Fred Nelson

** Skog Brothers, Carl Skog with brothers, Oscar, Theodore, Paul, Rueben and George Zirnhelt

*** John Finstad & crew. George & Carl B. Finstad, Radon & Christofer Lien, Melvin Overby, and Oscar Anderson.

Next, we nailed up the horizontal siding, which had popped off or was missing. Then, for the first time since 1958, the barn was painted with over 50 gallons of white paint.