Nordic Farms Barn

This immense, wood-frame dairy barn is an excellent late example of the gambrel-roofed, ground-stable type promoted by the U.S. Agricultural Extension Service beginning in 1914. It represents the continued success and expansion of dairy farming in Vermont in the mid-twentieth century, when older diversified farms rapidly disappeared from the landscape. As economic depression and the labor shortages of World War II led to the demise of hundreds of farms in southern and eastern Vermont, Champlain Valley farms expanded their dairy herds and built new barns like this one. Unlike earlier ground-stable dairy barns, this almost-two-hundred-foot-long barn has a number of modifications that updated the basic design. These include dormers for more light in the immense hayloft, a roof-end extension sheltering the hay-fork track for automated loading of the loft, and larger, tripartite windows that run its length. Although these modifications increased efficiency, within a decade this barn type was abandoned in favor of free-stall designs without haylofts, eliminating the labor of leading cows to individual stanchions and the filling of an overhead loft. After 1960, Chittenden slipped from the ranks of the leading dairy producing counties, and housing developments increasingly claimed former farms around Burlington, encroaching on this one as well.