Kenya Perry ’18Kenya Perry ’18

As Kenya Perry stood in her rubber boots on the ramp leading into the family’s gambrel-roofed barn Wednesday morning, her younger sister Sage Whitehead mucked out one of the horse stalls trailed by Tom and Jerry, two turkeys with brown and white feathers.

It was business as usual in the three-story barn, which was built in the post-Civil War era with openings between almost every board on the far wall to allow the air to circulate and thus reduce chances of fire starting in the hay.

 

The nomination process was initiated several years ago by Perry, now 20 and a sophomore at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, as part of a capstone project during her final year of her home schooling.

It proved to be a labor of love.

“I think that preserving the things that have been around a while is really important,” she said. “And growing up on a farm, I know how hard it is to work on a farm.”

Her family’s Winterberry Farm barn, which contains the former Foster Family Barn, is just off Route 27 in Belgrade. Today the barn houses animals and an area where those who buy shares in a community-supported agriculture program can pick up their goods, and it stores many of the farm’s items, including stacks of dried hay on both the second and third stories, and sleighs, canoes and chicken crates.

“I just really wanted to preserve our barn,” Perry said, looking around at the beams and posts. Rather than being solid, they consist “of two or three side-by-side six-inch planks,” the nomination paperwork says.

As part of her project, she determined that thick round nails held the structure together, not pegs or square nails. The roof is metal, and the exterior has narrow, weathered cedar shakes on the first floor as well as a line of them above the barn door. The fabric ductwork reaching to the ridgepole resembles large hot-air ductwork.

Most of the windows lack glass, but many have chicken wire screening to keep birds out. Along with the horses, the family has a team of oxen, three sheep raised for their wool, a flock of chickens for eggs and meat, and turkeys for meat — except for Tom and Jerry, heritage turkeys brought in six years ago by her brother Gilbert and spared each Thanksgiving.

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