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As Tobacco Fades, Barns Wilt
Some in Southern Md. Fight To Preserve Pieces of History
By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 15, 2004; Page A01
When he steps into the old white barn his grandfather built, Stephen Reeves can remember climbing way, way up, into the rafters, to help hang tobacco leaves to dry. The tin roof is perhaps 30 feet high; he remembers, as a little boy, trying not to look down as he reached for the leaves the men were pushing toward him on long poplar stakes. And he remembers how hot it was up there on a summer day.
Seven tobacco barns are scattered across Reeves's large farm in St. Mary's County. Rough planks have started to curl and pull away on the oldest one, built before the Civil War, and when Hurricane Isabel ripped through in September, part of the roof blew off and had to be replaced.
He's been working to keep them from falling down. "They're very charming," said Reeves, 55, walking past a barn with his dog Hoss racing ahead. "But they cost money to maintain."
The old tobacco barns that are so evocative of Southern Maryland's past are rotting away. Now years of slow decline, the toll of wind and rain and forgetfulness, have snapped into a more immediate loss: the end of tobacco farming. It's fading everywhere, but in Maryland the change is dramatic since a state-sponsored buyout has encouraged most tobacco farmers to switch to other crops.
And the relentless push of development means that the barns, now obsolete and often expensive to maintain, are getting in the way of new homes, new stores and new people who don't remember the old ways.
"The loss is accelerating," said Orlando Ridout, an architectural historian for the Maryland Historical Trust. In the next 25 years, he estimates, at least three-quarters of the state's tobacco barns will be gone.
Teresa Wilson, who fell in love with the lonely silhouettes of barns when she moved to St. Mary's County 30 years or so ago, said she wants people to know how threatened they are. She has gathered a group of preservationists in St. Mary's and four nearby counties -- Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles and Prince George's -- to urge the National Trust for Historic Preservation to put the barns on its list of the nation's 11 most endangered historic places.
The annual list, announced in May, doesn't bring immediate solutions. But Wilson and others say they hope that grant money or some form of official protection will follow when people realize that the barns could disappear.
"Barns are so symbolic of what this area's all about, its history, its culture," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who spends weekends in Calvert County. "They're beautiful structures. Everyone identifies with them."
Some people can't imagine the landscape without an old tobacco barn -- whether a bright red box popping out of a field in Virginia or an open barn up on a hill by the water in Southern Maryland, there to catch the winds that would cure the tobacco leaves. Sun glints off the tin barns' roofs and casts angular shadows. Ivy creeps up the walls like flourishes of calligraphy on the wood.
The barns were the first things Wilson thought were beautiful when she moved to St. Mary's from Charlottesville. "It's a hidden, forgotten kind of beauty," she said.
Some people just don't want to lose so much information about the past. The barns tell the story of generations of farming, Moe said.
Time was when preservationists didn't much care about that. Thirty years ago, "I never gave barns a second thought," said Ross M. Kimmel, supervisor of land and property management with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, while looking at a barn built with logs cut in 1828. "We were interested in the houses."
But Americans' idea of what is historically significant has broadened dramatically in recent decades, he said. "It has shifted from the Mount Vernons, the Williamsburgs, to vernacular architecture which shows how the vast majority of people lived, not just the upper crust."
Farmers have been growing tobacco in Southern Maryland longer than anywhere in the country, since the early 17th century. The buildings were structured differently; farmers in Maryland usually air-dried their crop, and many growers in Virginia and elsewhere flue-cured the leaves.
Barns show how building and farming have evolved over the years.
The oldest barn on Reeves's land has hand-hewn logs, fitted together with notches. Some logs are still covered with rough pine bark. "This is where they brought the oxen," he said, pointing to the small doors, sunlight filtering through gaps in the wood.
As farms changed, the barns changed, too. Later structures have planks from sawmills, nails -- and space for machinery. On Reeves's family's land alone, it's easy to see the progression in barns built around 1840, 1905, 1950 and 1970.
Some say the barns will have to keep evolving; buildings almost always need to be used in order to survive. And no one's handing out real money to keep barns standing.
Last year, Congress authorized a barn restoration project, Moe said, but didn't fund it. "We'll try again this year," he said. "There are no easy answers."
The National Trust has a program called Barn Again to help link farmers to tax credits and technical help to preserve old farm buildings. North Carolina encourages public-private partnerships to save barns. And a few programs in Maryland try to at least document the barns before they're gone.
No one even knows for sure how many are out there.
Some individual barns have been preserved, such as one for flue-cured tobacco that was scooped up from subdivision property in Henrico County, Va., and moved to Meadow Farm , a museum of 19th century Virginia farm life in Richmond; one in Calvert County that was moved to the fairgrounds when it got in the way of a new college campus; and one that is on the grounds at Greenwell State Park in St. Mary's County.
Donnie Hammett, manager of Greenwell, grew up helping harvest tobacco on his uncles' farms, so that barn brings back memories for him. He didn't have funding to restore it, so he roped in volunteers -- college students, Boy Scouts -- to tear down poison ivy, rake and nail up supports for the 150-plus-year-old barn.
After a tornado hit nearby Charles County in 2002, he scrounged around for scrap metal. "You'll see about 13 or 14 different flavors of tin up on the roof," Hammett said, grinning.
In Virginia, tobacco farming is dwindling as the market changes, and many farmers are hoping Congress will craft a buyout package that could involve cigarette company money. But in Maryland, lawmakers created a program to get farmers out of the tobacco business. In exchange for a promise to stop growing the crop, farmers were eligible for annual payments of $1 per pound for the next decade based on their past production.
Since 2001, about 85 percent of the state's roughly 1,000 tobacco growers have taken the buyout and committed to keep farming their land with a new crop for the next 10 years.
That made hundreds of barns instantly obsolete.
Tobacco barns can be awkward to convert since they're so specialized. Many are so open to the air that they're little more than roofs with some boards underneath, Wilson said, so they wouldn't make good houses without a lot of work. And they have lots of posts and internal supports that get in the way of the big farm equipment used today.
Reeves has to duck to walk through one end of his grandfather's barn, under a beam that's less than six feet off the ground. He bought a combine, and the massive green machine wouldn't fit in any of his old barns but cost too much to leave out in the weather. So he had someone saw into his grandfather's barn, changing the old doors that were about eight feet tall into a gaping hole nearly twice as high. "But the rest of them," he said, "there's not a whole lot you can do with them."
He stored hay in a couple of them, but vandals lighted them on fire. "A barn needs to be used, or it tends to fall into disrepair," he said. As it is, he just keeps putting up more tin, getting more poplar from the woods to replace boards and putting in new doors.
Reeves knows just how threatened the old ways are. His family has been in St. Mary's County since the first settlers came, but his farm has evolved. He doesn't grow tobacco anymore. He has raised hogs and grain, and now he's considering growing plants to sell to nurseries instead.
And he has a seat on the county planning board, so he sees the developers lining up for land. Reeves knows many of the former tobacco farms will be carved up into subdivisions eventually. "No one's going to remember any of this," he said.
If the land remains farmland, Reeves said, the barns will last a while yet. "You hold on to the old buildings because of some attachment -- there's no economic value," he said. "This is emotion."
When the farmers are gone, Reeves said, "the barns will fall down."
Some in Southern Md. Fight To Preserve Pieces of History
By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 15, 2004; Page A01
Seven tobacco barns are scattered across Reeves's large farm in St. Mary's County. Rough planks have started to curl and pull away on the oldest one, built before the Civil War, and when Hurricane Isabel ripped through in September, part of the roof blew off and had to be replaced.
He's been working to keep them from falling down. "They're very charming," said Reeves, 55, walking past a barn with his dog Hoss racing ahead. "But they cost money to maintain."
The old tobacco barns that are so evocative of Southern Maryland's past are rotting away. Now years of slow decline, the toll of wind and rain and forgetfulness, have snapped into a more immediate loss: the end of tobacco farming. It's fading everywhere, but in Maryland the change is dramatic since a state-sponsored buyout has encouraged most tobacco farmers to switch to other crops.
And the relentless push of development means that the barns, now obsolete and often expensive to maintain, are getting in the way of new homes, new stores and new people who don't remember the old ways.
"The loss is accelerating," said Orlando Ridout, an architectural historian for the Maryland Historical Trust. In the next 25 years, he estimates, at least three-quarters of the state's tobacco barns will be gone.
Teresa Wilson, who fell in love with the lonely silhouettes of barns when she moved to St. Mary's County 30 years or so ago, said she wants people to know how threatened they are. She has gathered a group of preservationists in St. Mary's and four nearby counties -- Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles and Prince George's -- to urge the National Trust for Historic Preservation to put the barns on its list of the nation's 11 most endangered historic places.
The annual list, announced in May, doesn't bring immediate solutions. But Wilson and others say they hope that grant money or some form of official protection will follow when people realize that the barns could disappear.
"Barns are so symbolic of what this area's all about, its history, its culture," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who spends weekends in Calvert County. "They're beautiful structures. Everyone identifies with them."
Some people can't imagine the landscape without an old tobacco barn -- whether a bright red box popping out of a field in Virginia or an open barn up on a hill by the water in Southern Maryland, there to catch the winds that would cure the tobacco leaves. Sun glints off the tin barns' roofs and casts angular shadows. Ivy creeps up the walls like flourishes of calligraphy on the wood.
The barns were the first things Wilson thought were beautiful when she moved to St. Mary's from Charlottesville. "It's a hidden, forgotten kind of beauty," she said.
Some people just don't want to lose so much information about the past. The barns tell the story of generations of farming, Moe said.
Time was when preservationists didn't much care about that. Thirty years ago, "I never gave barns a second thought," said Ross M. Kimmel, supervisor of land and property management with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, while looking at a barn built with logs cut in 1828. "We were interested in the houses."
But Americans' idea of what is historically significant has broadened dramatically in recent decades, he said. "It has shifted from the Mount Vernons, the Williamsburgs, to vernacular architecture which shows how the vast majority of people lived, not just the upper crust."
Farmers have been growing tobacco in Southern Maryland longer than anywhere in the country, since the early 17th century. The buildings were structured differently; farmers in Maryland usually air-dried their crop, and many growers in Virginia and elsewhere flue-cured the leaves.
Barns show how building and farming have evolved over the years.
The oldest barn on Reeves's land has hand-hewn logs, fitted together with notches. Some logs are still covered with rough pine bark. "This is where they brought the oxen," he said, pointing to the small doors, sunlight filtering through gaps in the wood.
As farms changed, the barns changed, too. Later structures have planks from sawmills, nails -- and space for machinery. On Reeves's family's land alone, it's easy to see the progression in barns built around 1840, 1905, 1950 and 1970.
Some say the barns will have to keep evolving; buildings almost always need to be used in order to survive. And no one's handing out real money to keep barns standing.
Last year, Congress authorized a barn restoration project, Moe said, but didn't fund it. "We'll try again this year," he said. "There are no easy answers."
The National Trust has a program called Barn Again to help link farmers to tax credits and technical help to preserve old farm buildings. North Carolina encourages public-private partnerships to save barns. And a few programs in Maryland try to at least document the barns before they're gone.
No one even knows for sure how many are out there.
Some individual barns have been preserved, such as one for flue-cured tobacco that was scooped up from subdivision property in Henrico County, Va., and moved to Meadow Farm , a museum of 19th century Virginia farm life in Richmond; one in Calvert County that was moved to the fairgrounds when it got in the way of a new college campus; and one that is on the grounds at Greenwell State Park in St. Mary's County.
Donnie Hammett, manager of Greenwell, grew up helping harvest tobacco on his uncles' farms, so that barn brings back memories for him. He didn't have funding to restore it, so he roped in volunteers -- college students, Boy Scouts -- to tear down poison ivy, rake and nail up supports for the 150-plus-year-old barn.
After a tornado hit nearby Charles County in 2002, he scrounged around for scrap metal. "You'll see about 13 or 14 different flavors of tin up on the roof," Hammett said, grinning.
In Virginia, tobacco farming is dwindling as the market changes, and many farmers are hoping Congress will craft a buyout package that could involve cigarette company money. But in Maryland, lawmakers created a program to get farmers out of the tobacco business. In exchange for a promise to stop growing the crop, farmers were eligible for annual payments of $1 per pound for the next decade based on their past production.
Since 2001, about 85 percent of the state's roughly 1,000 tobacco growers have taken the buyout and committed to keep farming their land with a new crop for the next 10 years.
That made hundreds of barns instantly obsolete.
Tobacco barns can be awkward to convert since they're so specialized. Many are so open to the air that they're little more than roofs with some boards underneath, Wilson said, so they wouldn't make good houses without a lot of work. And they have lots of posts and internal supports that get in the way of the big farm equipment used today.
Reeves has to duck to walk through one end of his grandfather's barn, under a beam that's less than six feet off the ground. He bought a combine, and the massive green machine wouldn't fit in any of his old barns but cost too much to leave out in the weather. So he had someone saw into his grandfather's barn, changing the old doors that were about eight feet tall into a gaping hole nearly twice as high. "But the rest of them," he said, "there's not a whole lot you can do with them."
He stored hay in a couple of them, but vandals lighted them on fire. "A barn needs to be used, or it tends to fall into disrepair," he said. As it is, he just keeps putting up more tin, getting more poplar from the woods to replace boards and putting in new doors.
Reeves knows just how threatened the old ways are. His family has been in St. Mary's County since the first settlers came, but his farm has evolved. He doesn't grow tobacco anymore. He has raised hogs and grain, and now he's considering growing plants to sell to nurseries instead.
And he has a seat on the county planning board, so he sees the developers lining up for land. Reeves knows many of the former tobacco farms will be carved up into subdivisions eventually. "No one's going to remember any of this," he said.
If the land remains farmland, Reeves said, the barns will last a while yet. "You hold on to the old buildings because of some attachment -- there's no economic value," he said. "This is emotion."
When the farmers are gone, Reeves said, "the barns will fall down."
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