Yup, it was a "grand old barn" measuring 60' x 100 '! Those old structures are irreplaceable. The timbers in them are something else for size and length. The main plates, purloin plates and sleepers were all 60 feet long, squared to 10 or 12". Hand hewn at that. I used to sit on a bale to take a break from throwing bales and just admire the beams and design in our barn. We don't grow trees like that any more. I will miss that.
What I will not miss is that it was also very labor intensive. Not handy for storing round bales, which is mostly how we do it now. Over the past few years, I had replaced most of the floor upstairs after busting through it with the loader tractor or with stacked round bales tumbling over on it. The livestock facilities down stairs were not handy either, being too low for the bigger tractors we presently use. But it worked.
We only lost a bale elevator, small v-box and a bit of feed milling equipment. Plus most of the winter's feed, bedding and some grain corn and feed wheat. The insurance has been quite reasonable and fair about everything.
I know what I would like to build - it just seems hard to justify spending about 100 g's for a small operation like ours when it hasn't been very kind to us over the past 5 years. Our sons have no interest in livestock, but maybe that would change if we had decent facilities to work in for a change. And if the cows would actually make some money, too!!!!
I will put a few more pics up.