Wedding barn
It's amazing, the things you can do with an old barn.
Twin Falls County Farmer Rick Pearson and his wife bought a farm in Buhl Idaho that came with an old barn. Through innovative thinking and some coincidences they turned the barn into an event center where they had weddings and other social events in it. Here’s Rick: “We probably have 10 to 15 a year and I think she’s already got that much booked for next year. Mostly weddings… we’ve had some proms here, high school proms, some 4H - FFA benefit dinners, some quinceaneras, we’ve had a couple of those, a couple birthday parties.”
“The last three years we’ve had Halloween parties, harvest parties and just invited the community and have had a good turnout for that as well.”
There’s no heat inside so Rick and his wife Susan operate mostly during the warmer months. He says it can get pretty warm during the heat of summer.
“We can open the during and kinda get a breeze blowing through and Susan has told me that I’m gonna install a window on that end so we can get some breeze through on that end, too but I haven’t got to that project yet.”
“A lot of the stuff that’s in here has come from different weddings and they just end up leaving them. We hung all these lights to start out with, and then the chandeliers are old rake wheels that one of the gals that got married, her dad had some old rake wheels laying around and so they put the lights and the old mason jars on them themselves. So those are old rake wheels.”
“Its getting to where weddings want to be kind of themed, and so it’s really getting a lot of country weddings. A lot of the bridesmaids will be in boots and dresses, and we end up with a barn dance basically.”
Rick says they’ve had to shoot birds occasionally, replace a few broken windows, and upgrade the electrical system.
“It’s really incredible, to think that they put these beams up completely by hand or with the use of horses or however they did it. It’s just amazing that they could construct something, and construct it a way that it’s going to last for 110 years. It’s just incredible.”
And it’s probably got a lot of years left.
“Yep, my banker says 30. – laughs –“
