[MUSIC] Mychel Matthews: Agriculture has always been Idaho's driving force.

Nancy Tyrrell: One way or another, whether directly or indirectly, all of us are tied to it.

Frank Eld: And, the most majestic of old farm buildings are barns.

Kolbie Ivey: They're magnificent.

They're huge.

They have so many stories to tell.

Lisa Dustin-Goede: There's a lot of attachment to the old barns, and the life that went with those.

Madeline Buckendorf: They were the business buildings of the farm.

Duane Ramseyer: The saying is "The barn builds the house."

That's an old saying.

Myrna Fuller: There are people who stop at every barn and take a picture.

We just call them, they're a barner.

Ken Levy: The thing that fascinates me and people about old barns is they give you an idea of what it was like back in the past.

Andrea Reid: It's nostalgia.

We all think back to the good old days.

Bruce Reichert, Host: Barns have been a fixture in Idaho since the late 19th century.

They're literally around every turn.

Some people might even argue that they form the backbone of our state.

Many of Idaho's old barns are still functioning, while others have seen better days.

The thing is, we seem to love each and every one of them.

So, what is it about a barn that sparks our imagination, and makes us want to learn more about them?

Outdoor Idaho takes to the road looking for answers, seeking out our state's historic, interesting and stunning agricultural icons.

[MUSIC] Announcer: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis legacy of building the great state of Idaho, by The Friends of Idaho Public Television, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the Idaho Public Television Endowment.

[MUSIC] Lisa Dustin-Goede: In Idaho, we had a lot of homesteads.

And, lots of open space that was being cultivated early on by the earliest settlers.

The barn was an essential building that they needed before almost anything else.

They were not necessarily built by professionals.

This is where we get into vernacular architecture, local materials adapted to local landscapes and the resources they had and the help that they had.

Reichert: Lisa Duskin-Goede is a folklorist.

She spent 13 years working with the Bear River Heritage Area.

And, one of her big projects was interviewing families about their barns for two self-guided tour books.

Duskin-Goede: We have a book for Idaho and a book for Utah.

Each book is in its third and fourth printing.

And, we've sold them all.

When you sit down with somebody and they begin to tell the story of the barn you get what's in their heart, you get their childhood.

Reichert: On page eight in the Idaho book you'll find the story of Ed Sawdust.

Ed was a farmer from Malad who built four small log barns for his family in the early 1930's.

Three of the barns are still standing.

We asked one of Ed's descendants to help bring the story of the barns to life.

Gene Caldwell: Hi, my name is Gene Caldwell and I grew up on this property.

I'm the oldest grandchild of Mr. Ed Williams.

And, he built these barns.

He had a sawmill up at the head of the Malad, which is an area about 20 miles northwest of here.

And, in his spare time, when he wasn't farming, he'd cut logs.

And, he got the nickname Ed Sawdust cause he had a lot of sawdust.

And, all his sons growing up inherited that name and called Sawed.

In this first barn here we raised chickens.

And, in the second barn back there we milked cows in there, six head of cows, twice a day, morning and night.

I learned how to milk when I was about eight years old.

We didn't have plumbing in the house when we first built it.

There was no plumbing.

You'd have to go out in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

We had a basketball hoop on this barn here for years.

Anyway, we'd play basketball, me and some friends, every Saturday on the barn.

And, we also had an outdoor privy right there next to the hoop just a little ways away from it.

And, when my sister needed to go to the bathroom my mom would come out and say "time-out, half-time, your sister has to go to the bathroom."

And, can you imagine her going to the bathroom with all those boys standing around there.

She made us move out here.

And, she was quite embarrassed, you understand.

So, that's kind of a funny part.

I didn't know if you wanted me to tell something like that.

But, that's the story.

[LAUGHS] She's say "time out, half time!"

[LAUGHS] Yeah.

Reichert: That was then, and this is now.

Ed's family no longer owns the property.

But, ironically, the man who does is running his own privately owned sawmill.

Gene Caldwell: Mr. Dean Hunt bought this property.

And, he's the third owner of this house.

He cuts logs, and cuts lumber and stuff, whatever people want.

I find it kind of, really interesting that this property was used this way in 1930.

And, here we are many years later and it's the same kind of operation on this same property.

Maybe it was meant to be.

[MUSIC] Reichert: Idahoans like Ed Sawdust may have built their barns with what they had on hand.

But, with the 20th century came expanded rail service.

And, prefab technology took a step forward.

Mail order barns became a reality.

Sears and Roebuck Company wasn't first to the game.

But, after flexing its mail order muscles it would lead the market.

[MUSIC] Madeline Buckendorf: There were tons of barn plans.

And, they were in early Idaho, as soon as the railroad was built, they were shipped out, pre-cut lumber, everything.

But, still the barn builder and the barn owner always put unique touches into their own personal barns, or the ones they built.

Reichert: Andrea Reid has lived in Boise since the early 1970's.

But, her childhood was spent in Idaho's Palouse country.

Andrea Reid: I grew up on a farm outside of Juliaetta and Kendrick area.

It was beautiful there.

Just not as close to friends as kids like to be.

Reichert: The family barn was massive.

And, you guessed it, it came straight out of the Sears catalogue.

Reid: My grandfather had homesteaded.

He's the one that had this barn built.

He was establishing a dairy herd in the nineteen-teens.

My grandfather also was also very modern in that he was one of the first in the area to have electricity.

And, of course, the barn had the electricity before the house did.

I didn't know it was a Sears kit barn until my brother passed away about three years ago.

Not only that, but the house I grew up with was also a kit house.

My daughter immediately went on Google and Googled pictures of both plans on an old Sears website.

And, I was just dumbfounded.

I knew they ordered a lot of things from Sears.

My grandfather had eight children and they would order fall clothes and take the buckboard down to meet the train and bring it all up.

And, I don't know if they did like a community barn raising, that they had lots of help, how they got all those pieces up there.

We did find out from my parents, when I met my husband at University of Idaho, he being from Boise, I was sure I had found somebody that didn't know the area.

Well, it turns out his mother grew up there and his grandfather did the stone work on the foundation.

Reichert: Andrea's family sold the barn and the house awhile back to some long time acquaintances.

But, she and her husband Jim do go back every now and then to visit.

Reid: Every few years we check with them.

And, now we take our grandchildren and say, look, this is where grandma grew up.

[MUSIC] Reichert: The University of Idaho's Beef Center barns date back to the early 20th century.

January through March can be pretty busy here.

[COW MOOS] Zane Garner: So, we're kind of wrapping up calving season.

We're almost done.

We've got two left.

It's really rewarding, and really makes a person sit back and appreciate what they every time you get to see a new calf hit the ground.

Reichert: Zane Garner manages the University's cow herd.

Garner: We've been calving since the 15th of January.

And, the reason we calve in the barns up here in this country, it gets pretty muddy in the springtime.

There's been years that, on the 15th of March we're two feet deep in mud out in some of our pastures.

So, we calve in the barns to kind of alleviate that and make our cattle a little more comfortable.

[COW MOOS] We run about a hundred head of Charolais cows here at the U of I.

They're all registered, pure bred cows.

Our main focus is to raise seed stock.

Most of our bulls get sold into southern Idaho.

We've got a long standing relationship with some producers down there that have been buying bulls from us for over 30 years.

Our primary goal is teaching and research opportunities.

We've got three or four different classes depending on the year and what's going on with the cattle.

Reichert: Garrett Barnes is a U of I student, and one of Zane's assistants.

Garrett Barnes: To me, I want to be able to raise quality beef that can feed the rest of the world.

I want to be able take care of my livestock and treat them with the utmost respect that I think they deserve.

And, this has been a great center to be a part of, and learn a lot of skills that are going to help me throughout the rest of my life as I raise my own herd of cattle.

[COW MOOS] Barnes: I'll admit, when I first came to this program I was kind of blown away looking at these barns and find out how old they were.

It's kind of like, wow.

There's a lot of time and a lot of effort that went to building these barns.

And, I think it's important to keep them around and cherish them, if nothing else, for the memories that they hold and the traditions that we still have.

[MUSIC] Reichert: The Palouse has quite a few impressive barns, and the Daily barn outside of Potlatch is one of them.

Kevin Harvill says returning here to live and run his family's farm was a long time in the making.

Kevin Harvill: I've traveled all over the world in the military.

And, we always come home here.

My great grandfather homesteaded this area in 1885.

And, I think he had about 320 acres at the time.

The barn was built in 1911 by hand.

And, I don't know the builder's name, but he built a number of barns in this area.

And, this is one of the last ones that I think that is still standing.

There's an old timer here who told me a story about my great grandfather hiring out young men to take the wagon and the horse team down to the river, get the gravel from the gravel bar and bring it back up to make the cement and put the cement in here.

Four generations have lived here.

And my wife and I, we're bringing it back to a working barn.

We've got horses and cats and cows call it home.

[MUSIC] Harvill: Now we're upstairs in the storage portion of this barn.

My memories of here as a kid was playing hide and seek.

And, you could hide from your sister or your siblings and then get down and go in the house while they're still looking for you.

It's a neat, neat area...neat construction up here.

That's still what amazes me is, I would have loved to have been here when they put this, put this together because there were no cranes.

It was pulleys and manpower.

Reichert: Neat construction or not, Palouse winters can be rough on a barn, especially the roof.

Harvill: And, my brother and sister and I talked about it.

And, I said I'm not going to watch, like I've seen other barns you know, deteriorate over the years and then just finally fall in.

We're either going to take it down or we're going to fix it.

Reichert: And, fix it they did...to the tune of $100,000.

The look is impressive.

Harvill: It shows up all over on calendars, phone books.

Reichert: Even an occasional scrapbook or two.

JoAnn and Sophia: There's that barn that's near Potlatch.

Yeah.

Reichert: Sophia Craypson and her grandmother JoAnn Shockley have been photographing barns since Sophia was very young.

It was Sophia's observation about another Palouse barn that set things in motion.

JoAnn Shockley: We were coming home from Potlatch after being at my parents.

And, from the back seat Sophia at probably four or five says to me, "Grandma, we need to take a picture of this old barn because one day it's going to be gone."

And, I thought...well, that's pretty insightful.

And, so we did.

We turned around, went back, took a picture of the barn...and two or three years later it was gone.

[LAUGHS] Reichert: JoAnn took that first photo with an adult camera.

Sophia took several others with one that was a little less sophisticated.

Sophia Craypson: My very first camera was like a Play School camera.

It was fire engine red with little yellow buttons.

JoAnn Shockley: But, it actually took very good pictures.

This little, this little camera that you held with both hands and clicked with a yellow button on it.

[LAUGHS] [MUSIC] Reichert: More seasoned barn photographers are constantly looking for perfect light.

And Golden Hour is when things can turn magical.

Ken Levy: If you can get the light exactly where you want it, and get those colors and textures to pop in your images of a barn, that's everything.

Reichert: Ken Levy has produced some very nice barn images over the years.

Levy: It started out to be hobby, shooting barns.

I really enjoyed the architecture.

And, as I went on further along with my hobby I went ahead and realized that barns are starting to disappear everywhere.

Reichert: That led to a website and a photographic journey he calls Disappearing Legacy.

Levy: Disappearing Legacy really reflects the way I've seen what's happening with barns.

Right here in the Treasure Valley most of them are gone.

I've photographed a bunch of barns that were icons in their day and went back to try to shoot them just a few years later and they've gone.

And, it really alarmed me.

Disappearing Legacy certainly speaks to what we had here once and what is now not here anymore, or going away.

My whole purpose for photographing old barns is to document them and keep them around, at least in our memories.

They give you an idea of what it was like back in the past, what it was like to actually live that agrarian lifestyle.

Old barns need to be preserved in whatever way possible.

And, if all they have are images of them, at least we have that.

[MUSIC] Reichert: Preserving a barn can also help define a family's legacy.

Kolbie Ivy: My name is Kolbie Ivey.

And, I'm from Cambridge, Idaho.

This is my family's barn.

My family has owned it since about 1922.

It was built in 1916.

It's called the Edwards-Gillette Barn.

The person that owned then it was Eddie Edwards.

He bought the place on an auction for about $4,500.

And, then he started building the barn and it fell down during a massive windstorm.

And, so then he started building it again.

And, it was completed in the end of 1916, I don't know exactly when.

It is probably the most famous barn in this town.

It is 46 ½ feet wide, 101 feet long and 45 feet tall.

The loft itself that we're sitting is 32 feet from the bottom boards to the ceiling.

Reichert: Entering a barn like this is like stepping into a cathedral.

Ivey: In a lot of ways, yeah, it does remind me of a cathedral in a church just because it's got the big domed shaped vaulted ceiling.

It's got all the bone structure that you could see.

And, it comes up to that point up in the top of a cathedral.

This barn definitely kept my family together.

I mean, we spent our life taking care of it and making sure that it properly stayed together and is still as strong as it is.

There have been a few boards that we've had to fix over the years just to keep the structure as sound as possible.

And, in the 1950's the roof was replaced.

It used to be a wood shingled roof.

And, then now it's a corrugated metal roof.

When I was growing up here used to be two big barn owls.

And, every time I'd come up here they'd fly out.

They never attacked us.

We were never threatened by them and they were never threatened by us.

They would just fly out.

And, when we were done getting our hay they would come back in.

I've lived in a lot of different other places.

I've lived in big cities and small towns.

And, I'll always come home to the small town.

I like my no stoplight town.

[ROOSTER CROWS] [MUSIC] Reichert: It's hard to imagine a time when this was nothing more than wasteland.

But, the Carey Act of 1894 helped pave the way for Idaho's canal system.

After the turn of the century water from the Snake River began flowing into farmer's fields.

Duane Ramseyer: At that time the entire area was sagebrush, you understand.

Nothing but sagebrush and jackrabbits, and so forth.

Madeline Buckendorf: And, the Carey Act was a state and private enterprise.

They worked together to bring the irrigation water to the area.

Reichert: It was also known as the Federal Desert Land Act.

It offered qualified settlers the opportunity to purchase and develop 160 acres of arid land out west.

Mychel Matthews: And, there was a huge promotional effort to bring people here.

A campaign, really.

Buckendorf: It was advertised as cheap land, and the irrigation would turn the sagebrush into the Garden of Eden.

Ramseyer: And, the first water came on the land in March of 1905.

Reichert: Adding water to the rich volcanic soil was almost like striking gold.

Farms, orchards and dairies began sprouting up.

And, the area surrounding Twin Falls became known as the Magic Valley.

Matthews: That's when real civilization hit.

Buckendorf: And, there was really only one successful Carey Act project in all of the United States.

And, that's in the Twin Falls, Buhl area.

Reichert: Jacob B Van Wagener played a significant role in that success.

He was financier from Pittsburgh who acquired his own Carey Act land in Jerome.

Nina Hollifield: Mr. Van Wagener was one of the earliest pioneers that helped finance the canals, Milner dam.

He and his wife purchased this land.

Then, they built this beautiful home, beautiful barn.

And, it was to send pictures back East and help to draw people out to the Magic Valley.

It was called Mountain View Ranch originally.

They raised apples.

They had Guernsey cows that they brought out from Wisconsin.

Reichert: The property went through several owners after the Van Wageners sold it the 1940's.

Nina and her husband John bought the home and the lava rock barn in 2014.

At that time it was known as the Spanbauer barn.

Hollifield: And, they had dances every Saturday.

So, to many people it's still known as Spanbauer barn.

They made it famous.

Reichert: Nina and John renamed it Mountain View Barn in honor of its early history.

And, they've ratcheted things up a notch.

[MUSIC] Hollifield: I was a nurse for 40 years I had always told my family that I wanted to have a deli when I retired.

And, so we decided to open a little sandwich shop.

But then, because the beautiful loft, we started doing weddings and other parties.

And, then we jumped right into the catering and cooking and Christmas parties.

It kind of got bigger than we expected right away.

Reichert: The barn has become something akin to a community center.

Hollifield: The whole valley has trusted us and have supported us.

And, I truly believe that is it has turned into a community center that's used.

Perfect place for the Farmer's Market.

Reichert: It was originally built to attract settlers.

And, now it's a Magic Valley gathering spot.

Mountain View Barn has stood the test of time to become a barn for all seasons.

Hollifield: It's just a treasure.

We have people from all over country, actually, have come into the barn.

Many are just kind of awestruck to think that this is sitting here in the middle of Southern Idaho.

Part of the history I didn't share are the lava rock walls.

I haven't measured, but they are extremely wide.

And, lava rock is what farmers just spend years and years plowing their fields and pulling out the lava rock.

And, here was a beautiful way to use that lava rock.

And, it looks today, I'm sure, like it did back in 1912 when it was built.

[MUSIC] Hollifield: When I'm in that barn I have a warm, welcoming kind of feeling.

And, that's my goal is to have it feel that way for people when they come to the barn.

There's something special about all barns, but I'm partial to this barn.

[MUSIC] Reichert: When you cross the Snake River and head south you'll find a fair amount of historic barns.

Some of them are still operational.

Others have succumbed to the elements and the passage of time.

Most notable are the dairy barns that were built by barn builder Henry Schick during the early part of the 20th century.

Mychel Matthews: So, Henry Schick was from Germany, but he was born in Russia.

His barns are the iconic dairy barns that have a real nostalgic feel to them now.

They're fascinating.

Reichert: Schick built the old Webbenhorst barn in Buhl in 1913.

Nancy Tyrrell came across it while she was out riding her bike in 1980.

And, it was love at first sight.

Nancy Tyrrell: I went past the house, and I looked at that barn and I just thought, whoa...who could have a house like this?

And I just thought, man.

It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

I was so excited.

I about fell off my bicycle.

But, I didn't crash, so.

Reichert: When the property came up for sale in 1995, Nancy and her husband Ed were in a position to buy.

Nancy Tyrell: We needed a property that could house us and a custom picture framing business.

And, then the antiques which seemed well suited for it.

[HAMMERING] Reichert: Everything was working out well with the barn and the business.

And, then a huge wind storm blew through the area in 2015.

Nancy Tyrell: You know, Ed and I kind of looked at each other and said, you know we've got too much into this to lose it now.

And, so we started scheming about what we could do to fully restore and really shore up the barn.

Reichert: They sold another property they owned to help pay for the remodel.

Seventy-thousand dollars later and the barn had a new roof and much needed bird proof siding.

Ed Tyrell: Idaho has a bird called a Flicker, which is a woodpecker.

And, we had holes all over the barn.

I think we counted twenty-some.

Nancy Tyrell: The bird poop was awful.

So, we took a weed sprayer and he sprayed down all of the flooring.

And, then we would scrape up the mud and guck and sweep it up into a dust pan.

And, then he would spray it down again.

And, he would get down, I mean this was on your hands and knees.

Ed Tyrell: I wouldn't eat off of them.

But, they're a lot better to have our grandkids up here with clean floors now.

[MUSIC] Reichert: Henry Schick helped build this massive barn for Gustave Kunze.

Kunze had moved to Buhl from Tillamook, Oregon where he'd been in the dairy business.

And, he founded the Cloverleaf cheese factory here.

Madeline Buckendorf: The Kunz barn was built in 1910.

At that time, and not for long, it was the largest barn in Idaho.

The cheese factory is still on the property.

It's separate from the barn.

Reichert: E.T.

Sandmeyer bought the property in 1918.

He ran the cheese factory for several years before turning it into a farmer's cooperative.

But, when hard times hit he was forced to close its doors.

The barn is still known as the Sandmeyer Barn.

[MUSIC] Reichert: Henry Schick's crowning achievement was this elaborate barn he built for himself in 1914.

But, after he left the area it fell into disrepair.

And, that 2015 windstorm?

Well, it wreaked havoc on the barn.

Two other storms in 2020 essentially put an end to Tom Gilbertson's restoration efforts.

Tom Gilbertson: I've been working on this barn for about 12 years now.

And, we've tried to keep the barn from falling down.

But, the weather patterns in Idaho have definitely changed.

Global winding, that's the main problem we had.

Buckendorf: It's too bad somebody didn't catch it 40 years ago when it was still in great shape and preserve it because it's really a unique barn.

His onion dome on the silo.

The fact it had a bathroom in there with a portable tub and a toilet and sink when his own house didn't have plumbing.

Kind of fascinating.

Gilbertson: I don't consider myself a failure, because the only time you fail is if you don't do something.

Then you fail.

And, I learned a great deal about history, about construction, about the weather by being in this barn.

It's been a very positive experience for me.

So, I don't have any regrets at all.

Reichert: On our third and final visit to the site, we're greeted by this... an empty field.

The property had been sold, and Henry Schick's masterpiece was gone.

And, now it's nothing more than a memory.

[WIND BLOWS] Reichert: Unfortunately, many of Idaho's barns are simply beyond saving.

We traveled to Kamiah to meet up with Clayton Gianopulos.

His company Idaho Barn Wood gives new life to what can appear to be a lost cause.

[POWER SAW] Clayton Gianopulos: Our wood products go to a wide range of projects.

Anything from exterior siding on a house to interior wall paneling.

Homeowners mostly.

The creation of my business I give credit to me dad.

He got me into woodworking from starting his own reclaimed wood company back in 2001.

And, so I was only 10 years old back then.

And, I loved to drive the fork lift and cut boards, and just do whatever I could to help.

[BEEPING] [BOARDS CRASHING] Reichert: For most of us, dismantling a barn would be a nightmare.

For Clayton, however, it's a labor of love.

Gianopulos: Taking down barns has to be a labor of love, just with all the blood and sweat.

It takes quite a bit to take some of these down.

Some of the barns that I've dismantled myself have been standing for over a hundred years.

The roofs are the number one thing, that, once that roof starts caving in then it's usually the barn's starting to fall down.

If people can replace the roofs with metal then I say, you know, leave them standing.

No point in tearing down a good barn.

Reichert: Clayton's company is small.

He relies on his friends to help with the labor, and uses social media for promotion.

And, there are times when he just hops in his truck and heads out to look for an opportunity.

Gianopulos: Sometimes I do drive around and look for an old barn that's falling down, and go knock on somebody's door and ask them if they'd like me to take it down.

There's a lot of other people that get ahold of me from word of mouth.

Reichert: From start to finish, producing barn wood paneling can be a pretty heavy lift.

Gianopulous: The process from a barn take-down to putting it up on somebody's wall could take months.

It just really depends on the size of the project.

The industry of reclaimed wood.

About 15 or 20 years ago it was very popular.

And, then it did seem to kind of get a little quiet there.

But, now it seems like it's back on the rise and one of the main sought after building materials for high class buildings, I guess you could say.

[MUSIC] Reichert: It may not look like it, but Dennis Hadley and his son Kaydn are preserving a bit of Canyon County history.

They're tearing down this barn, yes.

But, their intentions are good.

Dennis Hadley: This is an opportunity to take this barn and we're just going to move it less than a mile away.

And, we're going to build some old buildings out of it.

And, it'll live again.

As a kid growing up we had an old barn.

It was a milking barn when my grandpa was young.

My dad lived there 63 years on that same place, and that barn and everything.

So, that barn was taken down for houses.

It's just a sad thing.

We're just trying to save what we can.

Kadyn Hadley: Trying to keep it alive.

Dennis: Yeah.

You know, sometimes people say, you know, stay away, people moving in and everything.

But, it's going to happen.

I'm not against that.

I'm for trying to preserve some of the heritage of some of what we do have.

I've got a place just over the hill here that we're going to dig in.

And, we're going to fix up our barn and build more old barns with the ones from around here.

This is a lifetime plan.

Kadyn: Yeah.

[LAUGHS] Dennis: That comes back to me saying that we're just digging in.

Kadyn: This is something I worry about, what I'll inherit years down the road.

Dennis: Exactly.

[MUSIC] Reichert: Folks passing by might have assumed another slice of Idaho history was on its way out.

But, if only they would have stopped.

Dennis and Kadyn might have told them about their dream.

Dennis: A person can either wait for their dream or they can live their dream.

It's not perfect.

But, we're just living it as we go.

And, we're enjoying it the best we can.

We're just two Idaho boys with not a lot of money.

Kadyn: Two yahoos.

[LAUGHS] Dennis: Yahoo's, that are just trying to make it work, and enjoying it as we go.

[MUSIC] Frank Eld: Unfortunately we're losing many thousands of barns across the country every year.

I wish we could save more of them.

That's what I'm doing here at the Dry Creek Historical Society.

It's a bit tongue and cheek, but I call myself "The Barn Whisperer."

I'm working to stabilize this 150 year old barn.

This is the oldest barn in Ada County, I'm fairly certain.

And, it is also one of the oldest, if not the oldest, barn in Idaho.

It was built by Philip Schick between 1864 and 1868.

I was just amazed when I looked at the posts and the beams in this barn, because they're huge.

They're unusually large.

You don't find this in Idaho barns, especially little barns like this.

This is a small barn.

And, Schick originally came from New York State.

This tells me that this is a New England, upper New York barn.

What he built was what he knew.

The other thing that fascinated me immediately, and everybody asks about them, is why are there holes in the front of this barn?

Why are those little square holes up there?

They're pigeon holes, or bird holes.

Now, there were two reasons for that.

One was that they would keep down the insects.

The birds would eat the insects and pick them off of the cows or the horses, whatever.

They also always had a source of some meat.

And, if they needed a, hey we need a bird for dinner, they could go shoot a bird in a barn.

I'm so passionate.

I love these buildings.

I want to love them and I want to help save them.

A little eccentric, I admit.

[LAUGHS] [MUSIC] Reichert: Preston, Idaho became famous as the backdrop for the film Napoleon Dynamite.

We visited two interesting, yet distinctly different barns in the area.

The first was the Wheeler Barn.

Landon Wheeler: My name is Landon Creed Wheeler.

My family has owned the barn since 1986.

It was originally the Arthur Moser Barn.

And, they built it in around 1945.

It was always my grandpa's place.

It wasn't this clean.

We've kind of worked towards that the last couple of years since my brother and I have been older.

We poured some concrete and we've painted a little bit trying to keep up on things.

And, we've got some more plans in the future.

Reichert: The barn was a state of the art in it's day, complete with an impressive, well thought out milk room.

Wheeler: Before they had electricity and stuff they would store the milk here.

They'd have their empty cans here.

The milkman would bring new ones every day.

And, as they would get full they'd put them in our cement trough here with fresh running water, constant water stream, which would keep the milk cool.

Reichert: Landon replaced the old broken stairs leading to the hayloft.

Wheeler: One of the first things you notice when you walk up into the upstairs is the craftsmanship.

You get a lot of pretty fancy cuts.

We still have the old Jackson Fork up high with the rail.

The original owner here, his wife was my grandma's young women's leader for our church.

And, they would do dances up here every fall.

The floor was polished up just like a basketball court.

We are going to come up and hopefully re-sand the floor, and put a new lacquer coat on top of it, help preserve it for years to come.

[MUSIC] Wheeler: Whenever I see this barn or see the house it reminds me of my grandpa.

I wish he could be here to see what we've done with the barn.

The reason the barn means so much to you, it's kind of like the first tractor you ever drive, you need to keep it greased and keep it full of oil and everything, I guess.

And, maintenance is the key to keeping something in good shape, and you can't let things go.

So, that's why you've got to put a little bit of money and time into the barn.

[MUSIC] Reichert: The next barn we visited is unique....

The Smiley Face Barn.

Myrna Fuller: It's the most photographed barn here.

People want to come and take a picture, or they have family pictures taken.

Reichert: What's interesting is...this is what it looks like from the front.

Fuller: This barn was owned by Lyndon Beckstead who was just a character.

And, he loved to play practical jokes on people out in this area.

He knew everybody.

Reichert: Folks decided to play a joke on him.

So, while he was out of town they grabbed whatever leftover paint they had and went to work.

He was furious when he got back home because he was very meticulous about his barn.

He demanded they paint over the stripes.

Fuller: His children had to come out here and say, no...this is terrific.

We're keeping it.

You're not going to have this barn re-painted.

And, it has made so many people happy just to look at it that he got to be really proud of the stripes.

Reichert: But, there's more to the Smiley Face story.

Fuller: If you've ever been to a funeral here you have to pass this barn to go to the cemetery.

And, so when you're through with your funeral, you turn around to come back, and there's this big smiley face.

And, it's almost like, okay we're going to get through this.

I think the positioning of the barn next to the cemetery is significant.

[MUSIC] Dawn Dempsey: Hello beautiful.

Good morning, beautiful.

[MUSIC] Reichert: Anyone who loves animals has also got to love Pend Oreille Farms.

Dawn Dempsey is the lady in charge.

Dawn Dempsey: I am the horse rescuer of Survivors Rescue.

We've saved hundreds of horses.

And, not just ones from slaughter, but you know...a lot of local neglect, abuse cases.

I get calls every day on animals needing rescued.

And, I'm the only one in the area.

Karen Hansen: She just works hard, constantly...and, with an open heart and a desire to make a difference.

Reichert: Karen Hansen is a rescue volunteer and a donor.

She set up an investment fund to help support the rescue for years to come.

Hansen: I want to make it count.

And, so this is one of the ways I'm able to do that.

Dempsey: I think that it's really important that people know the commitment it is to have any animal, much less a horse.

And, to have the proper facility such as this barn to be able to care for them.

Education is a big thing.

Reichert: Bailey Butterfield knows that all too well.

Her educational-misstep is the reason she began volunteering for Dawn.

Bailey Butterfield: My freshman year of college I got into some academic dishonesty trouble.

And, it resulted in me needing to do some community service.

Dawn Dempsey: She was going down the wrong road.

And it was just fate that she ended up here.

It changed her life.

She ended up with a 4.0.

Butterfield: Inside of me, I changed.

I became confident.

I feel like Dawn has been a big reason for that.

Reichert: Bailey says she plans to keep on volunteering here.

The rescue has become like her second home.

Butterfield: I love it here.

Reichert: Buffy the Buffalo is a rescue as well.

She was owned by Forrest Bird, the inventor of the medical respirator.

And, when he and his wife passed away, Dawn got the call.

Dempsey: Buffy needed a home.

And, there were a lot of people who were wanting Buffy on the dinner plate.

Buffy doesn't know she's a buffalo.

She's never seen another buffalo.

Now she's 15.

She has cataracts...going blind.

But, she knows her place and she's comfortable.

She loves all her friends here.

And, she will be here until the day she dies.

And, then there's Gilbert... [MUSIC] Dempsey: He was actually purchased by my husband for me for a Christmas gift.

When everybody found out that my husband got me a zebra for Christmas, all his friends were in trouble.

They were mad at him.

They were like, what are we going to get our wife?

Hansen: Gilbert's got his own attitude towards life.

Gilbert does, though, pay attention to the mini's who are boarded next to him.

And, if something isn't going right, Gilbert will sound the alarm because he sees it as part of his responsibility.

[MUSIC] Reichert: The Valley Vista Ranch Barn south of Sandpoint sits alongside Highway 95 in all of its red and white glory.

It's owned by Rodney and Jan Reid.

Frank Zimmerman and his wife Sonja owned it before that.

Frank Zimmerman: When we bought this place it was in foreclosure.

It had been abandoned for several years.

The barn was in bad shape, the house was worse.

People used to hunt pigeons in here with a .22 and so there were multiple holes in the roof which allowed the rain to come in.

And, so there was a lot of rotted wood.

[MUSIC] Zimmerman: This was a landmark.

Of course, it's not exactly a small barn.

It's a huge barn.

And, it was always pretty well kept until those years where it fell into disrepair.

We replaced a lot of the siding, some of the top plates.

When we were tearing parts of it off and trying to re-do it I had numerous people stop in with tears in their eyes because they thought we were tearing it down.

And they were just so hopeful that we weren't going to do that.

And, I had no intention of doing that.

Close to 150 Gallons of paint we put on this thing, spraying it on with a lift.

And because we were cleaning out everybody we ended up going to Spokane Home Depot to get enough paint.

Home Depot has a barn red paint.

I think the one thought that I had, because we put so much time and work and money into it, is that I'm glad to see people that have it appreciate it and are willing to put the money into it to keep it because it's worth saving.

It really is.

So, I've had kind of a soft spot in my heart for old barns, even though I'm not a rancher or farmer and don't even like animals.

[MUSIC] Reichert: As we were driving through Rexburg we noticed two well-built barns off of Highway 20.

So, we turned around and knocked on the door of Bruce and Lolita Shirley.

It turns out Bruce did most of the work on the barns himself.

Bruce Shirley: When I started I thought, well I'm going to build them so they last at least 100 years.

If these barns don't last a lot longer than that I'm going to be sad.

[LAUGHS] My heart and soul has gone into them, you know.

I call this littler barn my homesteader barn.

I'm sad to say that my horse died just about the time I finished the barn.

So the horse never got to live in the barn I built for him.

But, uh, I put my statue horses in here and we get to feel for what it's kind of about.

[BARN DOOR OPENS] Reichert: The big barn has kind of morphed over the years.

Bruce Shirley: Originally it was going to be a dairy barn, a dairy parlor.

I turned this into a shop.

And, my wife had a dance studio.

And, she taught gymnastics and dance up there.

Reichert: Lolita began dance and gymnastics lessons at an early age.

And, by the time she was an adult she had come up with a unique routine that drew attention of the David Letterman show.

David Letterman: "Here we go ladies and gentlemen.

All the way from Idaho, Lolita Shirley picking up a handkerchief with her teeth.

For the record, she declined the M&M's.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHS] Here we go.

Okay, she's looking it over.

She's thinking about it.

She's on the chairs.

[AUDIENCE GASPS] [AUDIENCE CHEERS] Reichert: We asked Lolita if she feels the Letterman appearance was her 15 minutes of fame.

Lolita Shirley: I guess you would say so.

About more like two or three minutes instead of 15.

I practiced for the show here in the barn.

And, I did the splits on the chairs also.

But, they wouldn't let me do them.

I don't know why because I usually do that right after I do the back bend.

And, I usually do the splits on the chairs.

[MUSIC] Reichert: The Country Store Boutique is an institution outside of Idaho Falls.

It's a combination one-room schoolhouse and barn.

In the early 1970's Mary Jo Seneff wanted to open an antique store.

And, so she started looking for a storefront.

Eric Seneff: She spotted the schoolhouse.

It was sitting vacant, you know, along the side of this highway.

She thought, well this will be a great location, you know.

And anyway, we purchased this old schoolhouse.

And, as a family we worked and restored it and we opened in April of 1973.

Reichert: They outgrew the school after a few years, so Mary Jo went looking again.

And, she spotted a vacant barn about a mile down the highway.

Eric: There was an old elderly man that owned it and, you know, he didn't like the birds.

Reichert: But, he did like the idea of selling his barn.

Eric: Although, he said you'll never move that barn.

And, consequently, well, we were able to move the barn.

We hired some house movers.

This barn was built so stout they were able to jack it up and stick it on a flatbed trailer and down the highway they went with it.

Reichert: They joined the barn and the school and added another addition later.

Today, Eric and Melanie Seneff have the place filled floor to ceiling.

And, they have barn cats.

Meet Gandalf the Grey...He of The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit fame.

Melanie Seneff: Oh, he's being coy!

Reichert: There's a spiral staircase outside that leads to an apartment where the hayloft used to be.

The space also has a medieval bent to it.

Eric: It looks like a Hobbit dwelling, you know.

It's got hand hewn...lots of rustic wood.

And, it's a great apartment.

Reichert: Christopher Baker and his partner rented the apartment for a while and agreed to remodel it as part of their rental agreement.

Christopher Baker: I would have never thought to build this place.

It's almost like a fantasy.

We've remodeled the bathroom.

And, we've done a little bit of work with about every single system in the barn.

We went for a charred wood look to match the beams and everything in here.

Trying to keep it modern, but you know, antique and barn-like.

[MUSIC] Reichert: Turning an old barn into a wedding venue is fairly common.

But, few wind up like this Idaho Falls barn.

It took three years of hard work and perseverance for Dean and Deanna Ockerman to get the Barn on First to look like this.

The price tag... a whopping $700,000.

Dean Ockerman: When we first came into the barn it was really just a barn.

It had stalls downstairs for cows.

It had stalls for horses.

It had pigeons living in it.

It was a little rough.

Reichert: The barn has been busy since it opened.

Deanna works with the clients and keeps the books.

And, Dean calls himself the yard guy.

But, his talents extend far beyond lawn mowing and digging in the flower beds.

Deanna Ockerman: This barn is his design.

He had the vision for it.

And, I would just go with it.

Everything he wanted to do was great with me, other than he wanted to spend more money that I wanted to spend.

[LAUGHS] Reichert: Their investment sure seems to be paying dividends.

Dean: We made a profit the first year...amazingly.

Deanna: Now we just are booking like crazy.

People call nearly every day.

It worked out.

Reichert: With a barn like this, it's easy to see why.

Clergy: By the authority invested in me by the Church of the Latter Day Dude, and the great state of Idaho, I now pronounce you man and wife.

Trevor, you may kiss or high five the bride.

[HIGH FIVE SLAP] [MUSIC] Reichert: So, the next time you're traveling the backroads of Idaho, keep this in mind.

Every farm has a barn.

And, every barn has a story.

And, all you have to do is listen.

Because, you might just learn something from the historic, stunning and iconic "Barns of Idaho."

[MUSIC] ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis legacy of building the great state of Idaho, by the Friends of Idaho Idaho Public Television, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the Idaho Public Television Endowment.