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Apr 5, 2009 11:01 pm US/Central
Finding Minnesota: The Barns Of Carver County
MAYER, Minnn. (WCCO) ―
Photos are a wonderful and easy way to preserve memories. They can capture a moment in time, allowing us to save it forever.
And one photographer's affection for barns, has turned into a project that's documenting Carver County's history.
"A lot of these are going to be gone, soon," said Photographer Ruth Tremblay of some Carver County barns.
"Every day I drive around here and I find one missing that I saw a couple years ago. It is really sad to see that this part of history is not going to be around for future generations," said Tremblay. "I think it's important to record the lives of these people with oral histories and the builds, and how they worked."
Tremblay calls herself a "barn enthusiast" and she has plenty of photos to back that up. She even has a calendar called the Barns of Carver County.
"Some of them have a very majestic quality to them. When you look at the actual structures themselves you wonder, how did they even build these big structures with some of the limited tools they had?" she said. "Some of them barns here are centennial barns that date back to the 1800s."
Tremblay's calendar was such a big hit that she produced a short video that explains her passion for photographing barns and telling the stories of the families who ran them.
As Tremblay started documenting the aging buildings, she met the descendants of the first people to settle in Carver County, like Olverne Vinkemeier.
Vinkemeier is 83 years old. She still lives in the same house her grandparents built, that her parents raised her in and where she and her husband proudly raised their five kids.
"They didn't know any different, they just had to work. They tell me now all they really know is how to work," said Vinkemeier. "And they are all good workers. I'm not worried about them going off to work and not doing the job at all."
Keeping a barn in good condition can cost a lot of money. A new roof and a fresh coating of paint can cost several thousand dollars. That's why a lot of these old barns have fallen into disrepair.
But not the Vinkemeier's barn.
"It all changes, it all changes. But I still want to keep it. I'd really like to see it really cleaned up," she said.
People at the Carver County Historical Society would also like to see more barns kept up as well as Vinkemeier's. An exhibits at the historical society showcase the county's earliest days.
It's also a place where people can go to view and buy some of Tremblay's photos and soon her DVD. She's also giving copies of her video to the public library so children and adults can check out her work.
"I feel like a historian cause I feel like I'm getting this information together for other people, to share the stories of these people that people might never even know about," said Tremblay.
Tremblay is passing along her research about Carver County to the National Barn Alliance. That agency is trying to document the location and condition of barns around the country.
If you'd like to help documents barns, it just requires taking some photos and asking a few questions. For more information on how to do that, just click on the links below.
The Barns Of Carver County
Carver County Historical Society
National Barn Alliance
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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