@mysteryman,
mysteryman wrote:
Actually. many barns have "second floors" on them.
They are called hay lofts and are used to store hay, feed, supplies, or other farm equipment.
And yes, some of them are even converted into living quarters.
I was going to point that out as well. The old barn on the farm where I grew up had a second floor where we stored hay. It was sort of a rite of passage from boyhood to manhood to prove you could throw a hay bale from a truck or trailer into the hayloft door. When I was in my twenties, I happened to be home when a thunderstorm came up and lightning made a direct hit on the barn. It exploded in flames, largely because of the large amount of hay that happened to be stacked in there at the time. Hay, if a little on the green side, can generate heat and gases within the stack, and this adds increased risk to fire. However, our barn fire was not due to being started internally, but by the direct hit by lightning, but the conditions made it explode and go up faster.
To be fair to parados, some farmers did not milk the cows in those high barns, although some did. We had an attached lower pole barn that we milked the cows in.
mm, I think you are correct about some barns with living quarters. In the old countries, certain countries especially, the barns and houses were connected. I think that might have been the case in Denmark where my dad was born. when some of those Europeans came to this country and settled, they would build their houses and barns in similar ways to where they were from.
