Mountain Farm Museum Corn Crib and Gear Shed

These two buildings served very important functions on a farmstead. The first building was a corn crib that was moved from the Davis-Queen farm. The second building was a corn crib and gear shed that was moved from the farm of Jim Beard on Indian Creek, north of Bryson City, North Carolina. Corn was an extremely useful crop on a farm and most mountain farmers grew it. Corn was used to feed both the families and the livestock. Corn was either eaten fresh or turned into cornmeal and cooked into dishes such as cornbread and much. Dried corn was crushed up and turned into feed for the livestock on the farm. Corn that was not used fresh, was dried on the stalk and then stored in a corn crib. By placing the corn in the crib, it protected it from the different weather elements and also the threat of animals getting into the supply. The first building originally had a portion of the roof that was hinged, this made it easier to load the corn into the crib. It also had a smaller front door which enabled the corn to be removed from the crib when need be.

The second building had even more function than just a regular corn crib, by combining a crib and an area to store tools and other useful gears for the farm, a farmer was able to streamline the buildings that were needed on his farm. The overhead portion of the shed was used by driving a wagon up underneath it with a load of dried corn. Then the dried corn was thrown over the log wall into the crib section of the building

Tom Robbins, Mountain Farm Museum (Gatlinburg: Great Smoky Mountains Association), 9-10.