Driving across the rural North American countryside, barns are the most common and practical big building around. Barns are a common denominator in our shared history of landscape. Some are old and about to return to the soil and others are metallic and space-age.

In the worn boards and sagging roofs are the stories of generations of farmers who built them, the communities who held dances inside, and the bovine and other creatures who were their gentle tenants. The two barns at the Annand/Rowlatt Farmstead are a comparative study in the evolution of agricultural technology. The old barn was built before automobiles and it has large swinging doors on each side to allow horse and wagon entry. Once inside hay was pitched from platforms onto the wagon.

The big barn is architecturally a gambrel roof, bank barn and functionally was a milk barn for Mr. Rowlatt's herd of dairy cattle. On the ground level there is a row of dairy stalls for milking the cattle. The gambrel roof style of barn refers to the sloping, angled roof. The barn is constructed with post and beam construction.

The architectural styles of North American barns often reflect the cultural influences of the immigrants who built them, and they were further adapted to suit the climate, terrain and materials that were available. For example, in Pennsylvania, the Dutch immigrants decorated their barns with medallions with round, geometric coloured shapes called hex signs because they were supposed to protect the livestock and crops. The old barn on the Annand/ Rowland farmstead looks like weathered west coast driftwood, and the unfinished cedar planks make an unintentional reference to the great longhouses built by First Nation's groups along the west coast.

Even though they've changed with the times, barns are still as important as they ever were in the agricultural community. In an increasingly urban populated world, barns connect us to a shared rural past that is fast disappearing.