TOP SHOPS

THREE DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO TURN A SHOP INTO YOUR FARM'S HEADQUARTERS.

- Dave Mowitz

At one time, farm shops were, well, just that... under-roof areas built for repair and service chores.

Today such structures have grown beyond providing space to work on machinery to include specialized maintenance bays, welding centers, offices, meeting rooms, storage depots, kitchens, entertainment centers, and whatever farmers' fertile imaginations come up with.

Farm shops have morphed into one-stop farm headquarters that serve mechanical as well as management needs of operations.

In this edition of Top Shops, we offer three different approaches farmers took in creating such headquarters.

RUNYARD: OFFICE ADDITION IS A NATURAL EXTENSION

A lan and Dexter Runyard intended to create a machining, welding, and parts room when they added on to their 60x150-foot machine shed on their sixth-generation farm near Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. "But Mom [Susan] had other plans," her son, Dexter, explains with a smile.

"Today it's the farm's headquarters and family center.” The Runyards' 36x30-foot-addition looks nothing like an afterthought, stuck onto the side of the shop. Rather the building was designed into the original shop structure, with matching roof peaks.

This design provided for a second floor in the office addition that not only offered extra space for another office but also created an area to house the structure's mechanical needs of a furnace and water heater.

"That is all placed under the hip of the roof where it meets with the original shop's roof," Alan Runyard, Dexter's father, points out.

"This way, those items don't take up space needed for offices, which helped justify the additional expense of a second floor." The Runyards worked with their Morton Buildings dealer to design the addition.

"We didn't have a great deal of space around the outside of the shop to place the office, so we needed to fit the office into the farmstead area that was available," Alan adds.