The round barn

The octagonal “round barn”, built for threshing* with horses pulling a conical threshing roller, arrived in the latter part of the 18th century. This particular round barn is from the 1890s.

Unlike in a long barn, in a round barn you could drive around in circles, without having to turn the horse every time you reached the wall of the barn. This significantly streamlined the threshing process. When threshing, it was important to be mindful of when the horse might need to relieve itself, lest valuable bread grain would be destroyed.

* Threshing involves separating the core of the grain from the chaff, the casing that surrounds it.