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After 30 years, barn's owner misses roof

STATE CENTER - When Howard and JeNell Hilleman retired from farming in 1995, so did most of their outbuildings. Their picturesque farm, nestled in a small valley in east central Marshal County, features a pair of barns one that was strictly a cattle shed, and another that was a local landmark, until a storm altered its shape forever.

The storm-damaged barn featured a round roof of laminated trusses that was popular in the mid-1940s and 1950s. It afforded plenty of hay storage above, while horses and Jersey cows and calves loafed and waited for milking below.

Howard Hilleman, who was born on the farm, recalls, in 1947, semi trucks delivering the trusses. His mind's eye sees clearly the scaffolding and ropes and pulleys used to hoist each truss to its designated spot and lagged onto 2-by-8-inch beams. 14 milking stanchions were built into the concrete flooring.

JeNell Hilleman said that many neighbors used that round-roof barn as a landmark for giving directions. "When we told people where we live they'd say, 'Oh, you live where the round-roof barn is,'" she added.

"My father didn't think that barn would ever blow down," Howard Hilleman said. "But Mother Nature had other ideas."

The official weather report said the July 8, 1976, storm had 100 mile-per-hour straight winds that ripped the roof away and toppled a pair of nearby clay tile silos. But Hilleman said he thinks it might have been a tornado.

"The hay mow door, which was on the north side, ended up on the south side underneath the rest of the roof," he recalls. He doesn't remember if there were other evidences of twisted wood that would signify a tornado. "But the hardest thing was watching those rafters cut into small pieces and hauled out to be burned and knowing we lost all that storage."

By the time the storm struck, Hilleman had already served a three-year stint in the Army operating heavy equipment, assigned to the rebuilding of Germany in post-World War II. He returned to the farm and married JeNell in 1956. Together they worked the grade B dairy farm.

Neighbors came to their assistance, but a conventional pitched roof was put back onto the barn.

When farming shifted to tractors, the horses became redundant in the 1940s. Howard Hilleman said the family converted that section for a loafing area for the Jerseys. A pipeline was installed to that side for milking. He used a former horse paddock to keep a cow that produced more than enough milk for her calf, to milk one and even two others at times, so the mothers could be milked.

Prior to his military service, Hilleman milked cows by hand. "We had Jerseys because Holsteins back then didn't produce rich enough milk for the dairies." The family carried the 10-gallon milk pails to a concrete-lined pit that had a drain. Well water was pumped into the pit to keep the milk cool until it was transported to a nearby dairy.

Eventually, the Hillemans added a bulk tank to upgrade to grade A. A Surge system was installed to milk cows electrically, but they still hauled the cans to the bulk tank. "We carried many, many pails of milk," recalled JeNell Hilleman, with a shake of her head.

In 1970, the couple quit milking. "The price wasn't worth the demands being made by (milk) inspectors," Howard Hilleman explained. JeNell Hilleman added, "We were putting in 13-, 14- and 15-hour days."

By 1972, the Hillemans had added 20 farrowing crates and heat lamps to raise pigs as a way to replace the milk income.

With self-feeders for the hogs, Howard Hilleman said this form of livestock production was less labor-intensive than dairy cattle. "I didn't have to be (in the barn) at a certain time in morning or in the evening," he said. "All I had to do was make sure they had plenty of feed.

"It was a lot easier except for farrowing time, of course."

To minimize the constant demands of maintenance, a steel roof was added to the structure in 1980 and steel siding in the 1990s.

The Hillemans stopped farming in 1995 and their 240 acres of cropland is rented to a pair of nephews.

When asked what he thinks about when he looks at the barn today, Howard Hilleman said, "After so many years it still looks odd without the round roof.

"It just reminds me that just when you think you have things the way you want them, in so little time it can fall apart. But life is like that."

When asked the same question, JeNell Hilleman replied, "It isn't the work that it used to be. We put so many hours in it. We worked really hard."

The barn is now inactive in the business of farming, but in the past, JeNell Hilleman said, "it was a vital tool.

"In a way, it still is," she said with a teasing look at her husband. "It holds all of his cats, so we say that he still has chores to do."

Contact Larry Kershner at (515) 573-2141, ext. 453, or by e-mail at kersh@farm-news.com.