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Barn from Dąbrówka Dolna, mid-19th century

It was constructed in 1850s and it is an example of a barn composed of two haylofts and one clay dirt floor. At the front, from the barn yard, there are two additions built on to it – two sheds in which farm tool and equipment were stored. The whole complex is covered by a thatched gable roof. Attention should be paid to the fixings of the barn gate – they rotate on vertical wooden axles without metal hinges.

Barns were a necessary element of peasant homesteads and had their constant place there. They were usually situated in parallel to the village road, away from other buildings which made it possible to access them freely with crop or hay. The size of a barn depended on the size of a farm – the bigger the farm, the bigger the barn. Tools and equipment used on a large farm, on which modern tools and machines allowing to achieve bigger efficiency and crops were most quickly introduced, are displayed in the barn. However, older tools were not given up and for their best characteristics they were still used for work on a farm, e.g. a wooden plough obsolete as far as crop growing, was used for growing potatoes. Tools and machines located in the barn come, similarly to the equipment of the hut, from the end of 19th century. Among farm machines, the following deserve attention: a threshing machine with a treadmill from the farm machines factory in Otmuchów, a winnowing machine for crop, that is a machine for separating grain from chaff and segregating cereal, from 1856, manufactured by the Breidkopf & Söhn factory from Lewin Brzeski, and a horse mower.

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