 The Abbey Farmstead
Tillers' Training Facility for Draft Animal Powered Farming
The Abbey Farmstead is the key animal traction training venue at Tillers. It is a resurrection of the 1920s farm onto which Carroll and George Abbey's grandparents moved in 1925. Carroll and George worked there first for their ailing grandfather and than as a partnership farm with their parents and each other. In the 1990s, they gave it to the Kalamazoo Community Foundation upon their deaths. Since they made such a contribution to rural history and Tillers with the Abbey Collection of farm tools, we feel that it is appropriate to honor them by preserving their farmstead. We appreciate that they only made minor changes to the buildings on this farm, choosing instead to maintain its historical function.
Additionally, we believe a farmstead from the 1920s is most appropriate for our study of draft animal technology. Historical animal-powered tools were at their prime at that point in time. Tractors had been around for a few years and were becoming competitive with animal power for a few tasks. Yet, looking back, we can see a sequence of appropriateness for each power source that is instructive to those choosing between animal and mechanized power. While there are many new concepts and tools for farming with draft animals that have been developed or improved in the last 20 years, these historical lessons throw added light on our options.
Currently, we are rebuilding the Abbey Farmstead six miles from its original site, which has been surrounded by development, on the southeast corner of the city of Kalamazoo. Now at Tillers' new Cook's Mill site near Scotts, the Farmstead is surrounded by hills, forest, pasture, and Tillers'  Museum and workshops. It includes about 20 acres of the best tillable land on the site. The soils are light and well drained. While not the most fertile, they do allow us to return a class to field work very soon after rain. We continuously work to increase the organic content of the soils over the years with composting and plow downs.
Since 2003, we have built a tool shed, moved in two original chicken coops, disassembled and rebuilt the oldest barn (1860s) from the original site, and are currently reassembling the Draft Animal Barn. We have been teaching ox farming classes out of the tool shed. Draft horse classes work from the hitching posts by the garden shed.
Rebuilding the Draft Animal Barn
Thanks to the spring Timber Framing class, a number of volunteers, and a hard working crew of interns, Tillers is well on the way to re-assembling the Abbey Draft Barn. In the March Nigh Ox, we  wrote about dismantling the 30 x 60 foot barn at Tillers’ old site at the Abbey Farms off Sprinkle Road.
Since then, we quickly refined plans for upgrading the barn as a Draft Animal Barn. Of the 62 rafters, we only needed to replace five. We saved all 12 of the purlin posts. All of the eight 30-foot plates and beams survived after Steve Stier repaired one in a demo for the Timber Framing class. It now illustrates historical scarf joints. Of the 12 wall posts, four had cracked under earlier stress and needed to be replaced. Additionally, we replaced all the loft floor beams and joists to assure that it would support heavier baled hay. The floor framing had suffered some damage in the 1950s when first loaded with bales.
When rebuilt, this Draft Barn will be a great addition to Tillers’ training facilities. It will provide 1) a better environment for teaching students and international trainees how to work with draft animals, 2) a better facility for caring for the draft animals, and 3) expanded hay storage capacity.
The re-design maintains the pegged-timber construction of the old barn. Yet, the interior of the lower floor is re-organized to better meet the needs of draft animals and students. The barn is built with bents down its length that define five bays, each 12 x 30 feet. Originally, the second and fourth bays had large double doors on the north and single walk doors on the south through which the sheep entered and exited. We are opening those two bays completely with double doors at both the north and south walls of the barn to open Bays 2 and 4 as drive throughs. They will serve a number of purposes including bringing animals in and out of stalls, yoking and harnessing exercises for students, loading manure spreaders, gathering of students, or even short-term storage of hay wagons.
Bay 1 will house up to three pairs of adult oxen in double stalls. Bay 3 will house young calves in four double stalls. This bay will also have some room for yoke racks and other tools on the outside walls. The draft horses will be stabled in Bay 5 in four single stalls. This Bay will still have space for a small tack and feed room. It will also contain access to the loft so that on public days loft access can be controlled.
Teaching capacity will be enhanced by having a dedicated barn for the draft animals. It will gather both draft animals and their harnessing gear—yokes, harness, eveners, and the like. The animal care tools for currying and trimming hooves will be stored right on the walls near the animals where they can be described and demonstrated in a moment. Currying is a key aspect of our low-stress training of calves. It rewards and acclimates animals to positive contact from human handlers. In this re-des igned barn, we will be able to reach over and curry the animals each time we walk through. The drive through bays will serve as multipurpose classrooms in which animals can be tied in inclement weather for yoking and harnessing demonstrations. We teach people the skills of working with draft animals despite rough weather. However, student attention spans are stretched when we can alternate sessions indoors and out as weather shifts from cold rain to noon day summer sun. The posts that line the drive throughs and support the loft floor are designed to double as hitching rails and cross tie anchors. Draft horses can be tied for hoof care and shoeing demonstrations in familiar territory—right behind their own stalls. Farm implements can be driven into these drive through bays for discussions of adjustment and maintenance.
Housing the draft animals in tie stalls for feeding and at night through the winter will increase our control of their individual feeding. It will give us daily opportunities to handle them even if they are not being worked. Having labeled stalls will help new interns and trainees quickly learn the names of animals, which is key to tracking their traits, needs and personalities. Particular feeding instructions can be posted on the walls in front of their mangers. Keeping oxen in double stalls will encourage more rapid bonding of pairs.
The training of young calves as oxen progresses faster when they are fed and cared for intensively by people. That will better happen in small pens between pasturing. The Abbey Draft Barn will have four double calf stalls to hold up to eight calves in training. This will facilitate much greater training experience by our interns and trainees. One of our greatest international challenges remains winning people from punishment-based animal training to low-stress calf training techniques. This is a challenge in part because it takes two to three years to see the true benefits in the field. Most farmers in the developing world are too desperate economically to look that far ahead. We need a visibly clear example of our training processes for international trainees. This facility will feature calf training front and center.
New hay capacity will permit us to store about 3,200 bales in the loft just above the animals. For the last few years, we have been feeding our oxen and horses with round bales stored outside and fed outside. The Abbey Draft Barn will give us the opportunity to feed them small bale hay that has been stored indoors and that can be more carefully calibrated to the nutritional needs of each animal. We expect to save 30 to 40% of current hay use and improve care for the draft animals. We will need about 20 pounds of hay for each day per 1,000 pounds of mature draft animal. Planning on 200 days per year without pasture and 10 adult draft animals weighing nearly 2,000 pounds each and eight calves at up to 400 pounds each, we will need about 92,000 pounds of hay. At 40 pounds per bale, that equals 2,300 bales. That leaves a few hundred bales of extra capacity for the dairy goats that will live next door.
Siting relative to the other buildings of the Abbey Farmstead will continue to be guided by the judgment of Carroll and George Abbey’s grandfather. When Tillers was at its prior Sprinkle Road site, we always found the open courtyard between the cow barn and the draft barn to accommodate training well. The placement anticipates rebuilding the Abbey house and the main wing of the cow barn to complete the complex. At that point, the house will be home to interns and trainees who will easily be able to walk out and care for these draft animals—about 100 feet from their door to the barn door.
Construction
The barn frame now sits on a poured concrete foundation wall that is 28 inches higher than in the old barn to better protect the wooden frame from moisture and decay. The timber frame itself is largely as originally designed, with a few engineering upgrades. Finally, while it originally had a wood shingle roof, it will now be covered with a metal standing seam roof that should assure a long future.
We were able to preserve most of the wall posts despite decay at the sill by increasing the height of the concrete foundation wall. This permitted cutting off the bottom 28 inches of each post where most of the rot had occurred over the years.
The six main loft beams supporting the floor were replaced. They had been heavily notched in the initial construction to house floor joists. These notches reduced the strength of the 8 x 10 inch by 30 foot beam. While apparently adequate for loose hay storage, it seemed marginal to our engineer, Thomas Nehil of Nehil-Sivak, for storage of bales.
Also, the interior pairs of loft purlin posts which were 14 feet apart had spread four to six inches at the top from the outward force of the rafter load. This resulted in some broken tenons and weak joints. To avoid this in the reconstructed barn, Tom Nehil recommended some 12 foot braces from the outer end of the loft floor beams up to near the top of the purlin posts. This is a very strong remedy to the original weakness. The barn design is significantly improved which should overcompensate for the age of the materials.
 Budget of Reconstruction Costs
We estimate that the reconstruction of the barn will cost $50,912 plus volunteer and in-kind contributions. We are looking to a broad group of supporters. The concrete work for the foundations and floor and the metal roof will be the two most costly aspects of the building. Combining the re-assembly with a previously scheduled Timber Framing class saved several thousand dollars in costs. The students helped assemble and raise the bents. This also permitted us to do much more of the work with historical manual methods.
Time Table
The surprise initiation of the project by Kendall Electric’s action to develop the old site demanded an accelerated calendar for dismantling the barn. The opportunity to assign the re-assembly of the frame to the Timber Framing class previously scheduled for April 20-25th meant that we had to focus intently on engineering, drawing up re-construction plans, obtaining a building permit and an earth change permit, excavating the site, and bidding out the foundation work. Fortunately, we were just finishing the Storage Pole Building for the Abb ey Collection and were able to keep the timbers dry there for three weeks during the worst of the spring rains. During the class, all of the new timbers were mortised and tenoned, the bent frames were assembled, and on the last day all but Bent 6 were raised. We had two rain showers that each stopped work for about one hour. Volunteers came back to help raise the last bent and set the purlin posts and plates. The interns pitched in to setting the rafters. We still have some of the most costly parts of the work to do. To protect the building from continued rain, we need to roof it soon. We plan on a metal roof to reduce the snow load and increase durability. The siding is being seasoned so it will not shrink too badly after it is nailed in place.
In the current construction mode of accelerated Design–Build, opportunities have driven this project into Fund–Build, raising money as the building grows. While we would rather have gathered the needed funds in advance of the project, that would not have permitted taking advantage of the tight time window at the old site to remove the building as new construction started around it or to pull together the resources to fast track it into Tillers’ spring Timber Framing class. Maintaining momentum is critical to limiting the exposure of the frame to weather during reconstruction. Thanks to generous help from Graber Post Buildings of Montgomery, Indiana, the metal roof is installed. The barn has also been sided. Floors and stalls will make it a useable barn!
With the recent $10,000 commitment by the Abbey Historical Fund of the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, we are within $16,000 of completing the funding for this effort.
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A New Granary Added to the Original Farmstead
The April 2010 Timber Framing and Raising class built a small granary for the Abbey Farmstead for improved feed and newly harvested grain storage.
The building is a small 22 by 22 foot structure with two floors. While that may seem small, it has to be strong enough to hold nearly 50 tons of grain. Most grains are nearly as heavy as water, and their structural loads are unusual. Tom Nehil helped with the engineering. The plans include 11 bins with 144 bushel capacity. We used some of the hardwood harvested in February 2010’s Logging with Draft Animals class for central supporting posts.
The design includes most of the elements of much larger frames. The advantage of building a small structure in a class is that students experience more of the complete process from setting sills to lifting rafters.
This granary will permit us to grow more grains and process them as animal feed on the farm. Our weanling calves will appreciate it.
Future Buildings for the Abbey Farmstead
We want the Abbey Farmstead to be a mixed crops and livestock farm. In addition to the draft animal barn, a main 34' by 60' barn will be added to the 1860s cow barn that was previously relocated to Cook's Mill. The main barn will add excellent hay and grain capacity and will support a small herd of about 16 milk cows. The original main barn on the Abbey site was of heavier construction, but was not salvageable because of rot from years of leaking roofs. It will cost about $120,000 to replicate it from new materials.
The Abbey house was originally built in several steps beginning in the 1860s. It became a five bedroom 3,200 sq ft home. When we are able to rebuild it, it will provide excellent on-farm housing for interns and long term students right on the f arm. From there they will step out to close in the chickens in the evening or milk the cows in the morning. It had touches of Italianate features and added substance to the farmstead. This will be a more costly addition at about $250,000.
Additionally, the Farmstead had a 28' by 38' tool shed / corncrib. With Tillers' focus on options in farming tools and practices, we need all the storage we can get. This building also had a small workshop area that would relieve the blacksmith shop from some farm projects.
Economics of the Farm
To be sustainable, the long-term support for this farm will come from three primary sources: student fees for the farming and draft animal classes, farm product sales of trained oxen and milk to the Cook's Mill Creamery, and admission to casual guests and groups and guest rooms in the house.
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