We don’t find a lot of pine in the few immediate counties where we live and work. There was a lot of elm in these parts. But, nevertheless, once upon a time, someone found it and used it for a barn. This beam has some wonderful darks and reds with robust texture.

In one of the pictures, you can see a hand hewn pine beam. It was actually on it’s 2nd reuse in the early 1900s barn. One would venture a safe guess that the beam came from an earlier, smaller barn or granary at the same location. The beam probably dates back to the 1800s when the pioneers were just settling these lands.

The source barn was 19-teens barn near Waconia, Minnesota. The old barn was about 2 or 3 miles from the Swedish immigrant, Andrew Peterson, Farm. The Andrew Peterson farm became famous, particularly in Sweden, after the meticulous journals he kept that became the basis for Vilhelm Moberg’s Emigrants book series.