Photography by Rush Jagoe, courtesy of Berman Horn Studio.
A dramatic black barn set against a rolling green Hudson Valley landscape greets visitors to Sky High Farm, which has a purpose just as grand.
The painter Dan Colen, who bought the one-time farm in 2011 to put some physical distance between himself and the city’s downtown art scene, has a studio and residence on the property.
In Pine Plains, New York, the L-shaped barn at Sky High Farm has two attached volumes serving as a livestock barn and a harvest processing facility.
Of Sky High Farm’s 40 acres of hilly land, two are devoted to vegetable production and 25 to animal pasture. Now in its fifth season, the farm estimates it has donated more than 36,000 nutritious, organically grown meals to the hungry.
A poured-concrete shelter on the property is topped with cladding and framing that mimics the main barn.
The shelter was built as a compost shed and to store propane tanks and generators, “but the animals kind of took it over,” said Berman.
The structure is still used for its intended purposes, but the animals—here, a donkey and chickens—”like to hang out there when they’re outdoors.”
The hallway of the grain processing facility, where hats and boots are stored. The harvest facility makes use of more modern construction techniques compared to the traditional framing of the livestock barn, shown below.
The hallway leads to the office, feed room, and cold storage.
Livestock accoutrements hang on a painted peg rail.
A mudroom with bathroom, laundry, and storage links the two wings of the barn.
The livestock wing has a concrete floor and is framed in heavy fir timber from Williams Lumber upstate.
A ladder climbs from the first floor of the livestock barn to the hayloft above.
Hay is loaded directly into the loft by conveyor belt through the loft’s upper doors.
When needed, hay is dropped directly from the loft to the barn floor below through a framed chute.
“The opening to the first floor is framed out to be both a handrail and a support for the hay piles—so neither hay nor people topple down,” said Berman.
The view from the hayloft.
The architects used simple forms and materials, “both based on budget and to create a sense of accretion over time, as if this space could have been renovated and added to over many years,” said Berman.
Six interns live on-site.