New barn helps Lang Pioneer Village and Museum stay open year-round

Lang Pioneer Village, located just outside the village of Keene, is described as a living museum.

Visitors can take a walk back in time and appreciate history as it was many years ago.

With the addition of a $2.5-million, 11,000 square-foot Peterborough County Agricultural Heritage Building, the museum can now operate year-round.

This new barn, which is modelled after barns built in the 1900s, will help Lang Pioneer Village and Museum deliver its services and education to a wider audience.

“The last time we built some infrastructure was back in 1983,” said museum manager Joe Corrigan. “The village has expanded over that time and so this building will give us a lot more support for our village as it stands and moving forward.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "The last time we built some infrastructure was back in 1983," said museum manager Joe Corrigan. "The village has expanded over that time and so this building will give us a lot more support for our village as it stands and moving forward."

The barn project has been in the works for more than a decade and was not only built to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary but to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Lang Pioneer Village.

Much of the funding came from different levels of government and the agriculture community.

“A lot of it (the funding) came from the federal government’s cultural spaces program,” said Corrigan. “We got a donation from the Trillium Foundation and a lot of the rest came from private donors.”

It was just back in April when the construction started and the exterior walls were raised at a special ceremony. Along the way, there have been many people involved in the fundraising and construction.

A wing of the new barn will be home to the Peterborough and County Agricultural Hall of Fame, which Minister of Rural Affairs and Peterborough MPP Jeff Leal says is important and will honour the rich agricultural history in the region.

“The ways that we can keep reminding our urban cousins (of the importance of the agriculture sector) is that this heritage gets preserved here forever and reminds us, so we know that the agriculture industry continues to be the backbone of the Ontario economy.”

Construction of the exterior of the barn is nearly complete while much work remains to be done on the inside of the new barn.