From Forest to Frame: Building Merck Forest's New Timber Frame Barn

MFFC's new timber frame animal barn — the future home for Merck Forest's goats, lambs, and horses — started with a walk into the woods. In the fall of 2024, Dylan Durkee, our Fleet & Facilities Manager, and our timber frame team began scouting trees for the project, using the cool fall mornings to fell Norway spruce for the barn's floor joists. Spruce has a spiral grain, which makes it ideal for joists that need to bend and flex, but a poor choice for posts and beams because of that grain.

As fall turned to winter, the team kept returning to the woods, when low water content makes trees easier to harvest and easier to pull from snowy ground. Red oak, eastern white pine, black cherry, ash, and larch joined the spruce. The species were chosen for the barn, and other projects around campus, and for the forest it came from.

Trees harvested were selected in partnership with our forester, as part of a broader plan to support maple regrowth and open new wildlife habitat. The timber frame barn is a living example of MFFC's forest stewardship work, framed and standing.

When the time came for milling, the team turned to LSF Forest Products, a Vermont company with the equipment to handle long, heavy timbers and which has a longstanding working relationship with Merck Forest.

By spring, the first timbers were ready for joinery, and the team began cutting the barn's seventy-five floor joists in Merck Forest's Timber Frame Shop. As the weeks passed, the work grew more intricate — mortises, tenons, scarf joints, hand-shaped knee braces — each joint fitted by hand.

Spring also brought new life to Merck Forest's farm: lambs, goats, rabbits, and chicks, all waiting for the building now taking shape a short walk away. And next week, it all comes together. We'll raise the barn, and you can be here when we do it! See timbers harvested from this land, milled in Vermont, and joined by hand as they are lifted into place, becoming a structure built entirely from trees you can still find growing here on campus.

It's a great example of what active, visible stewardship looks like in practice. Come talk with the timber team to hear how they made their choices to help leave the land more whole than we found it. Join us for the barn raising starting June 22 through June 26.