barn inspiration

So if you follow me on Pinterest you will have seen that I am pinning a lot of barns. In fact I am slightly obsessed with barns. Thought I should explain. Currawong Cottage is on a farm that we want to develop. It has been unloved for decades and the land and dams need a lot of tlc. We have big plans, vineyard, olive groves, veggies, a home one day, but all plans have to start somewhere and ours start with a barn.

We need a barn to store all the farm equipment that we are accumulating, and also to create a permanent workshop so we don't have to cart our tools interstate every time we visit. Last time we visited I found a glorious position, close to the existing entrance and power lines and with glorious views down the middle paddock where we one day plan to have vines. It is a beautiful location and practical too.

So now to the barn, or barns we would like to build. We would like to build two if we can. Barns are big! When I started looking at dimensions I was surprised just how big because when you see them in the country landscape they don't look huge. But then farm equipment is big and we need to future proof the barn for all the equipment we would one day like to own, like a tractor.

I want our barn to be practical, but pretty too, and for the workshop area, where we plan to spend a lot of time, to have access not only to good light, but the gorgeous country views.
I am heavily influenced by the Cape Dutch architecture from my other home city of Cape Town. I don't want to recreate it exactly in Australia, but I do want the scale and enormous beauty of these farms. They were brilliantly laid out with the buildings flanked by wide avenues, work yard, and kitchen gardens. But at the same time I love the Australian style of corrugated iron and weathered wood. I would love to use some of the enormous old fallen trees to mill our own timber for cladding.