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By Anne Basye
Special to La Conner Community News

Board by board, a remnant of the early days of Skagit farming is being taken apart at the Mesman farm at Dodge Valley and Chilberg roads.

The building began its life on Hulbert Road, north of Chilberg Road and next to Sullivan Slough on land then owned by the Gaches family. Its purpose: storing oats, the crop that helped early Skagit farmers prosper. First grown in 1868 by settler Michael Sullivan, oats were the oil of their day, fueling the horses that drew buggies, wagons and farm equipment.

“Oats were sent from here to Seattle, but in the 1920s, when Seattleites bought cars, the market collapsed,” Alan Mesman said. A few years later, the warehouse was moved south to the Mesman property “on enormous rollers and a huge pile of horses, by hand.” Since the early 1940s it has served as the dairy’s calf barn.

Now Alexa Morgan and Dominic McGuire spend weekends on the barn’s roof, removing shingles with hammers and crowbars. Once the shingles are off — a time-consuming process — they can access the underlying 2-by-6 rafters and 1-by-6 siding. They hope to salvage as much as possible by hand, since the barn was built and moved without machinery, but will rent equipment if needed.

The lumber — gorgeous straight, vertical-grain clear fir with almost no knotholes — will be used for personal projects on their family farm in Bow.

So the barn will be saved, not lost. Mesman is glad the barn will have a new home and a new life. The south end is rotten, it’s dangerously close to Dodge Valley Road, and the family no longer needs space for calves.

Since leaving Organic Valley, the Mesmans have sold their milk directly to Samish Bay Cheese for use in its yogurt. In March, the new owner of Samish Bay bought their cows. The cows you see grazing belong to dairyman Jeremy Visser of Sno Valley Organic in Snohomish. These “dry cows” are heifers that are not pregnant and won’t be having calves.

Parts from the robotic milking system, state of the art when installed in 2013 and one of the first such systems in Western Washington, will be sold to other small dairies.

Three generations of Mesmans continue to raise grass, oats and hay, and are very much farmers. Chelsy Mesman serves as cattle supervisor for 4-H, and young John Mesman is already showing cows at the Skagit County Fair. The family will expand the metal feeder barn onto the calf barn’s footprint to better feed 200 cows — about twice as large as the herd they sold — when rain makes fields too soggy for them to graze safely.

As for Morgan and McGuire, they are excited to be repurposing the lumber, “much like folks in agricultural communities have been doing for centuries,” Morgan said. “By the end of our project our hands will have touched every single piece of lumber on that barn.”

Each shingle they remove increases their admiration and respect for the barn’s history and craftsmanship.

“Above all we are grateful to the Mesman family for their patience, encouragement, and friendliness,” she said. “They are a true pillar of our community.”