Barn building on the cheap

Forgive me if my memory is off, but one of the early articles in Mother Earth had a title along the lines of “ How Bear and Eagle Built That Barn.”  It was about building a 16’ x 16’  structure out of junk poles and black plastic.  To this day I wonder how long it lasted.  But it does beg a serious question that is important for newby homesteaders.  How would the members here go about building a 16 x16 structure ….that would last ….at minimum cost?

"Minimum cost" and "last" are rather two opposite concepts. I have built a temporary mini barn for my sheep and pig out of 48x40" pallets standing on their long sides with the roof also made from the same pallets. I used standard lumber screws and fabricated some closing puns from 4 pieces of rebars and 2x4.. No ugly plastic. In my opinion it would last at least 10 years in my climate, but just recently I have built something real and will dismantle the temporary barn next year.

I deliberately left the terms vague to leave the door to creativity a little wider open.   Because I have a good supply of pallets, they were where my mind went.  The roof design gets a little more fuzzy.  I would like to deal in materials relatively easy to scrounge. Though I suppose pallets with shingles made of flattened cans might work.

I see.
I have made the roof flat, so entire project took me no more than 2 hours for connecting the pallets and 2 hours for grading my stone hard soil with hoe and a chisel. I did not worry about any roofing material, because for 6 months of the year I get at most 0.1" of rain. When it started raining I covered it temporarily with black tarp and pressed with another pallet.
If I had to do a sloping roof or put some roofing material I would consider it not efficient any more - I would have to put my real labor and use temporary materials and I prefer to use my time to build something real that will last few hundred years. So in my opinion it makes sense to use pallets for ad hoc, quick structures that will be erected really quickly and this way - cheaply. Also, they do not look really ugly like some hybrid of abandoned random materials. If someone wanted they could be brushed or charred rather quickly and then oiled.

Here is the original story;
Mother Earth Bear and Eagle build-a-pole-barn

i cannot find a follow up article yet
Krishna Eagle wrote the 1972 article

Where I live we have no building codes so it is legal and easier, but I built a 30X48 barn for $4450.00

I used my own logs cut from my farm, paid a guy to saw it into lumber, and then used the rough sawn lumber set at barn spacing which is 4 feet on center. Half the cost was using NEW steel roofing, but ensured the building was shedding water and snow load.

A lot of people get scared about 4 ft on center spacing, but here barns have been framed that way since the 1970's and are still standing.

A loafing shed makes for a fairly inexpensive barn idea.

We had both a pole barn and a loafing shed which both used the corrugated metal sheets.

Using a junk pole for the walls sounds great.

Hi John,

Thanks for the article. Considering the time frame, my memory wasn’t too bad.  I am amazed I was reading Mother Earth back in 72.   I thought it was in the later 70s.