Barn rounds out a century with a variety of uses

A few miles northwest of Fairchild Air Force Base along picturesque Deep Creek stands a beautifully kept, 100-year-old round barn that has found a new purpose now that its hay storage and dairy operation days are over.

The Deep Creek Barn, also known as the Middleburg Barn, was built in 1916 by dairy farmer M.F. Middleburg during the height of what was called the “true circular” round barn era. Round barns were popular from about 1850 to the late 1930s – though some were actually octagonal – because the balloon framing and self-supporting roofs, which required no elaborate truss systems, made construction less expensive. Plus the interior layout was viewed as more efficient because it allowed farmers to walk in a continuous direction as their dairy cows were held in place in stanchions around a central silo.

The 16-sided threshing barn, designed and built by George Washington in 1793 at his farm in Virginia, is considered to be the first American round barn. However the design did not catch on overwhelmingly, as round barns are harder to expand and the advent of farm machinery neutralized the advantages of the labor-saving but harder-to-construct round barns.

Middleburg built his barn along the banks of the weeping-willow-lined Deep Creek for his dairy farm operation. The barn had room for 35 cows that were fed from the barn’s center silo, which held chopped hay, oats and greens from the meadow north of the barn. There was a drainage ditch behind the cows.

Owner Sally Burge said one of the questions she is often asked about the barn is how pieces of wood were bent to create the round shape. The answer, she said, is that planed pine boards were soaked in water to give them the pliability necessary to bend sufficiently.

Burge, who bought the 160-acre Deep Creek Farm at 811 Deep Creek Road in 1975 with her husband, Ed, said she learned from an elderly neighbor that Middleburg held a dance at the barn once he put in the final touch – laying cork floors so his dairy cows could have softer surfaces to stand on. Although there were pieces of brittle cork remaining when the Burges bought the barn, it is all gone now.

Another interesting thing about the barn’s builder was that he showed environmental consciousness back in 1916, Burge said. Manure was pumped from the ditches into a large holding tank behind the barn and then carried out into the meadow to be used as fertilizer.

The barn was originally lighted by carbide lanterns, one of which remains and is kept in a display case in the barn. The exterior doors are original, as are the window frames and much of the window glass. “We’ve only replaced six window panes,” Burge said.

The barn’s original color was dark green, and it has been repainted and reroofed (twice) and also rewired.

The Burges bought the property because they wanted a place for horses for their children, using the barn for hay storage (though they later built a separate hay storage barn). As their children grew up, daughter Cindy Burge operated a professional horse training facility at the site for more than 20 years before her death from injuries in a fall from a horse in Kalispell in 2004. Even now horse camps and clinics are still held there, and the Burges have five horses on site – three belonging to grandchildren and two boarders.

Also the Washington Civil War Association’s Battle of Deep Creek re-enactors event is held on the property each Memorial Day Weekend.

“There are 450 re-enactors who camp in the meadow behind the barn and re-enact battles over the three days,” said Burge, who is the retired director of Eastern Washington University’s Academic Support Center. “Probably 5,000 people come to watch.”

The barn is well maintained and has undergone some unique interior remodeling. Ed Burge, a retired vice president at the Farm Credit Bank, has an extensive collection of Hamley saddles and has created within the interior of the barn a saddle galley featuring 200 of those saddles. A wall was erected where the stanchions had stood, creating an interior room circling the center silo that has a display of saddles from 1845 to 1930. On the outside of the wall, facing the drainage ditch, saddles from 1931 to 1980 are displayed. All have signage with historic information.

The barn is on the Washington State Heritage Barn Register, and the Burges are pleased to show it to visitors. They prefer that people call first to make an appointment, but Sally Burge recalls one Sunday a year ago seeing four elderly women outside looking at the barn.

“They had driven from Wisconsin,” she said. “They were retired and were traveling around looking at old barns. They had just come from Montana and had a list in their hands of barns in this area and were heading to Western Washington. They asked to take pictures and were delighted to see our barn. How wonderful was that!”