Celebrating Madison County’s farm buildings
There are at least 10,000 barns in Madison County, according to a conservative estimate by the Appalachian Barn Alliance — that’s roughly one barn for every two people in the area. It’s already a shocking figure, but the organization’s lead researcher, architect Taylor Barnhill, says a more realistic estimate would near 20,000 or 30,000 barns. Many people quote a lower barn-count estimate, “because they really can’t believe how many barns there are here,” Barnhill says. His countywide study averages about five barns per mile of county road. At 3,800 miles of county roads, that’s 19,000 barns at least, and, “That doesn’t count all the barns up all these hollers and private roads that you can’t see from a county road,” he says.
To celebrate that particular crop, the Appalachian Barn Alliance hosts Barn Month 2016, a series of events surrounding the third annual Barn Day on Saturday, May 21. The festivities kick off Friday, May 6, with the opening reception of The Barns of Madison County exhibit at The Madison County Arts Center.
(Mountain Xpress, 5/2/2016)