Barn raising

Yet a barn was also a large and costly structure, the assembly of which required more labor than a typical family could provide.

The tradition of "barn raising" continues, more or less unchanged, in some Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities, particularly in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and some rural parts of Canada.

Workers are differentiated by age and gender: men construct the barn, women provide water and food, the youngest children watch, and older boys are assigned to fetch parts and tools.

Timber for the framing was mostly produced in the winter by the farmer and his crew hewing logs to the correct shape with axes or felling the trees and bringing them to a sawmill.

In earlier American rural life, communities raised barns because many hands were required.

In areas that were sparsely settled or on the edge of the frontier, it was not possible to hire carpenters or other tradesmen to build a barn.

The harsher winters gave more urgency to the matter of barn construction than was present in the relatively milder climate in much of Europe.

), barn-raisings were typically occasions of community good-feeling, solidarity and festivity, as well as cooperative labor, and figured as part of a wider culture of neighborly mutual assistance (at harvest, for instance), sharing of tools and ox-teams, etc.

Customarily the women of the families involved prepared hearty lunches for the builders and completion was celebrated with a feast and dance — often till dawn.

Churches were not constructed with the same degree of urgency, and were most often built of native stone in some regions — a more durable material than the wood of which barns were made, and more time-consuming to lay.