Originally posted as the Ontario Barn Preservation newsletter, February 2025.

Dear Members,

Part of saving old barns is finding a way to keep them in use. A barn in practical use, especially for a business, is a barn which can be supported, physically and financially. So far there are no grants for Ontario barns. But, there are a lot of interesting ways to use a barn in small rural businesses. 

I've posted links to those turning old barns into event venues. It can be a beautiful and exciting enterprise, but not for everyone. 

I think of other things which can be grown and sold, with less money and labour invested. (At least in theory). I've looked at Ontario mint and lavender farms because both of these grow quite easily and the plants grow well even in poor soil and without a lot of watering. Also, nut trees. In that case we decided it wasn't realistic because my brother is allergic to nuts. 

The I read about Ontario truffle farming. Did you know we have our own native truffles which can be farmed without a lot of space required? I've still got a lot more reading to do about the truffles but I'm sharing the idea and the information I've found. Maybe this will save your barn and give you something new to take up, as a hobby or a business.

Ontario Truffle Association The link is broken today but it was working in 2025.

North American Truffle Growers Association

Farmtario - Building a market for Ontario truffles

CBC - Eastern Ontario farmer discovers new variety of truffle

What Do You Know About the Eaton Hall Farm, Eversley, Ontario?

The town, Eversley, Ontario, is a hamlet, part of King City. 

Above photo (Note: I did not include the photos in reposting this) found on Camera On King & Aurora: Eaton Hall Barn - 50 Years After the Fire

History source: Hiking the GTA (This is cut and pasted from two original posts with more information and photos than I have posted here). 

Hiking the GTA: Eaton Hall

Hiking the GTA: Eversley - Ghost Towns of the GTA

The 700-acre property has a history that goes back to First Nations who camped around the lake and made use of the nearby Carrying Place Trail. The Toronto Purchase in 1787 allowed King township to be surveyed and opened to farmers in the 1820s. Some of the earliest in the area of Eversley was the Ferguson family who had a kettle lake on their section of the Oak Ridges Morraine. 

One of the most prominent buildings in the old community of Eversley is the Henry Pellatt barn because it is quite close to 15 sideroad. It was built in the early 1920s and later sold to the Eaton family along with 400 acres of land which they added to their estate, Eaton Hall. The foundation is surrounded on four sides with 3 over 3 windows giving it a unique look and allowing lots of light into the animal pens. Henry Pellatt owned Casa Loma and the nearby Mary lake estate in the 4th concession.

Starting in the 1920s Eversley was transformed by the arrival of the Eaton family who bought 700 acres in the north west area of the community.

The Eatons went on a building campaign as they sought to develop their estate into a working farm that could produce eggs and butter as well as other products to be sold in their stores. They built a dairy building, a chicken house, an ice house, and a greenhouse. They added a large cattle and horse barn which suffered two fires.

The Eaton Horse and Cattle Barn was completed in 1923 and was a notable sight in Eversley until it was destroyed by a fire in 1937. Lady Eaton promptly had it rebuilt but the two silos and clock tower were destroyed in a second fire on April 18, 1966 and were never replaced.

Eaton Hall: Pride of King Township - Book by Kelly Mathews.

Publisher's description of the book: "In 1901, Florence McCrea married into one of the most prosperous families in the Dominion of Canada, becoming Lady Eaton fourteen years later when her husband, John Craig Eaton, was knighted. Not long after the death of her husband, Lady Eaton retired from her home in Toronto to the seventy-two-room, Norman-style chateau she had built on their King City property. She named it Eaton Hall. The estate fueled the local economy and community, supported the Canadian World War II effort and established a firm place in the hearts and minds of the residents of King Township. Rediscover an enchanting and bygone age with the life and history of Lady Eaton and her grand Eaton Hall."

YouTube: Toronto Landscape TV - Eaton Hall (2010)

After Lady Eaton's death (1970) Eaton Hall was owned by Seneca College but unused by 2012. Presently Eaton Hall Country Inn and Spa is owned by Peter & Paul’s Hospitality Group, a venue for events.

Posted by Laura Laura

Highlights from the monthly Directors meeting...

What do you use your old outhouse for? Will uses the old outhouse for a garden shed. My Dad wanted to use the old outhouse at the end of our driveway for the children to wait inside for the school bus. My Mom protested by burning it. 

In case you missed it!

Local Gardener magazine features Ontario gardens and gardeners. (Not just Ontario but those are the gardens I looked at first when I noticed this on their website). They also have gardening podcasts and a free newsletter "10 Neat Things".

Ontario’s Ice Harvest History - Lillie's post starts with the mystery of a barn on a small, rocky island in a lake. A neighbour let her know the barn was for horses used in the ice trade. Lillie has done a lot of research about the ice harvest and trade in Ontario. Lillie sells hardy Canadian seeds on Etsy.

The Back-Breaking Leaf - National Film Board of Canada, 1959. Tobacco farming/ harvesting in Delhi, Ontario.

Muskoka, Ontario artist, Sherry Beiers, is looking for images of barns she can turn into paintings. Would you like your barn painted?

Tis the season for driving along country lanes and finding apple trees loaded with fresh fruit, never picked. Kind of sad those trees that grow forgotten along the road. Once they would have been picked, the apples used in pies or eaten right off the tree. Now people just drive on by and only notice them in passing. Yet those are our history, our heritage.

Next time you see an apple tree stop and pick a few. Some may be bug eaten, but some of the brown patches are only places where it rubbed on the tree branch and not anything you can’t just peel away. It may be the best apple you have ever had, if you give them a chance. Of those I picked almost all were edible, not bug eaten as I expected they would be. One was especially delicious. It’s a shame I don’t know what kind of apple tree it came from.

Would you grow an apple from seed? Have you ever grown a plant from seed? Why not try one, even something tropical or exotic and have it grow by your writing space. Keep your seedling company and let it inspire you with something fresh and growing where you work.

I looked at the photos of barns in this post. To me, most of them are inactive, not actually abandoned. They are still maintained, enough to not be falling down, don't look salvaged for barn boards, etc. So, they didn't really seem abandoned or derelict. Probably someone else would consider any barn not actively used to be abandoned. I guess it is all perspective. Are you someone using a barn or someone photographing it, looking at it for history, art, or industry/ agriculture or architecture?

I have not (so far) found a link to the photographer, John H. Busch or his fellow explorer, Mary Lynn Busch. There are good points in the post about exploring, history and photographing old places in Ontario. I've copied and pasted parts of the post, not in order so I can keep topics, like photographing the barns together.

Tips for Photographing Abandoned Barns

It’s interesting how you can photograph the same subject several times in one day and capture a different result each time, depending on the location of the sun, cloud cover, and location of the point of view. I learned through experience that my best colour photos are taken on cloudy days, but it is hard to exclude sunny-day shadows for good contrast.

I have shot and compiled a selection of these abandoned barns. For various reasons, it’s sometimes difficult to get the proper perspective while photographing these structures. Some are set far back from the road; there is often the presence of trees and foliage; and sometimes the time of day isn’t ideal. I believe some of my best photos of these barns were taken during the winter months, due to the absence of foliage, but ironically some of the best colours were during the summer months. Most of the barns are plain and unpainted, but a few are painted “barn red” while the odd one is white or green.

The Beginning of the End

The barns with missing boards or ones that have had part of their metal roofs blown off are the ones I refer to as doomed. Once this process begins, the barn will collapse relatively quickly. A year or two of rain on the dry hardwood beams, coupled with an entry for the wind to blow through, often speeds up the process. Gravity always seems to win in the end.

Another factor that contributes to the disappearance of these old barns is economics, including property taxes. Once the landowner realizes that the barn, which is often completely empty, is costing extra money in tax assessment, an excavator is brought in and the barn is dismantled quickly, often leaving the original farmhouse as the only building on the property.

To this day, terms such as “top plate, girt, corner post, brace, bent, mortise and tenon” still come to mind whenever I see different barns.

Source: Readers Digest: Abandoned Barns of Southwestern Ontario | Our Canada