Three weeks ago the hay barn at B Ranch blew down during a storm—and Daniel Brown can pretty much explain why. Mr. Brown, who worked for the National Park Service for 38 years, spent a decade and a half of his career at Point Reyes National Seashore, preserving historic barns. He assessed what work should be done and wrote grants for projects at about 10 different barns, with a focus on preserving—that is, repairing or replacing with the same materials, down to the species of tree (mostly redwood). “It’s case by case, almost board by board, deciding what to replace and repair,” he told the Light. Much of the work consisted of repairing walls and roofs of old milking barns that were converted to hay storage in the 1930s and 40s, when dairies built new concrete milking barns; he also worked on horse barns. Preserving the old wooden buildings isn’t easy, he said. The wind can be brutal, ripping through the cavernous structures and popping off roofs or knocking down walls. The wood, particularly in this foggy climate, tends to get buggy. Nails rust. “It’s a rough climate. Even galvanized nails don’t last out there,” he said. And over the years, some ranches removed the cross ties, which hold the walls together, to let hay trucks get in, further compromising their strength. The B Ranch barn, which rancher Jarrod Mendoza said was built around 1920, faced particular problems. A drain into a manure pit on the south side made scaffolding virtually impossible. Money was also tricky since, Mr. Brown said, his funds came from regional park service grants. Because they were for historic preservation—and because they could only do so much each year—priority tended to go to structures with more historic integrity. Some time ago, a large section of B Ranch’s hay barn burned down; as a result, “it lacked integrity. It didn’t have the original form. So that put it lower on the ranking scale. That’s hard to explain to ranchers, but it’s important in funding requests,” he said. Mr. Brown, who retired last year, spent a decade working on different parts of D Ranch’s hay barn. He estimated that he wrapped up his final work—which, over the years, included replacing a section of roof and installing cross ties and painting in 2012. Recently, part of a wall collapsed, causing a section of roof to pitch. It was a section he believes they hadn’t worked on. “It’s hard to anticipate the nails failing, but it happens,” he said. “The work is never done on these barns.” Mr. Brown will give a talk on his work at 10 a.m. on Friday, April 22 during a meeting of the Marin Conservation League’s Agricultural Land-Use Committee at the Marin County Farm Bureau, in Point Reyes Station. All are welcome.
An expert on seashore barns, and a collapsed one
