Turn Your Farm Shop Into Your Farm’s Headquarters

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

Alan and Dexter Runyard intended to create a machining, welding, and parts room when they added on to their 60×150-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’ 36×30-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.

Adornments, such as a front porch, dormers, cupolas, and eyebrow overhangs, make the Runyard office appear as a seamless addition. “It made for a very attractive addition to the farmstead, which we are proud of,” Alan says. “And it has become a family gathering point and a place for my children to come and be with us during the day.”

The Runyards didn’t restrict their innovations to the office addition. Previously they had partitioned the 60×150-foot-wide machine shed to create a 60×60-foot shop, accessed from the farmyard through an overhead door. “The back 90 feet [serve] as cold storage,” Dexter explains. “We could remove that partition wall to grow the shop in the future as the farm grows or equipment changes.”

Olson: Multipurpose Shop With Office Complex

Behind tractor and combine steering wheels, walking fields, and especially when working on equipment outdoors, Doug and Karon Olson spent years dreaming of a new shop. The dream would manifest itself as a shop, farm headquarters, and entertainment complex to handle a growing farm operation.

The couple, who farms with their daughter, Christina, near Mondovi, Wisconsin, southwest of Eau Claire, invested days writing down ideas and visiting other farms’ shops to cherry-pick concepts that would go into their complex, which resides in an 80×125-foot structure. The building is divided into two sections: 100 feet at one end dedicated to work bays, and 25 feet at the other end hosting offices, storage rooms, and an entertainment center.

Doors on Doors

The work bays are accessed through four doors. A 30×18-foot-tall door offers easy access into the main work center for header-equipped combines, as well as tractors pulling a planter or tillage equipment. “Being able to wheel them into the shop is a big plus when it’s cold and rainy,” points out Doug, who recalls “too many years working on equipment outdoors on the dirt.”

On the sides of the structure facing the farmyard are two additional doors, measuring 20×17 feet and 24×17 feet; both provide access into two additional work bays. Directly across from the farmyard-side 24×17-foot door, a fourth door, also 24×17 feet, offers a straight pass-through for semi trucks and trailers. “In some ways, I think this is one of the best features in the shop,” Christina says.

Myriad Features

Other work bay features include:

• 20-foot sidewalls, “a must to make room for today’s equipment such as combines with a tank topper,” Doug says.
• 3×8-foot windows placed near the tops of the walls and windows in the doors to let in daylight, as well as solar heat in winter. “There are days we don’t have to turn on the lights, thanks to those windows,” Doug explains.
• A floor drain running along the area between the two 24×17-foot doors.

Offices and Storage Rooms

A complex of rooms accommodating multiple offices, kitchens, storage rooms, and an entertainment center resides at the structure’s 25-foot north end. Two offices, a separate file room, kitchen, and dining room are positioned on the east side. Windows on the two side-by-side offices look out on the farmyard, “so we can see who is coming and going,” Karon notes.

Next to the office-kitchen are a bathroom and utility room. “We placed a sink and vanity outside the bathroom door, so we don’t bring dirt and grease into the bathroom,” Karon says.

Adjacent to the bathroom, an entertainment room opens into the shop. Complete with stove, refrigerator, and ample countertops, it provides a welcome area to serve food for family, as well as community events the Olsons host. 

A 15-foot-wide parts and tool storage room next to the entertainment room completes the shop’s north end. “We can lock this up to keep tools secure,” Doug says.

The loft area over the offices, bathroom, entertainment center, and parts room furnishes invaluable storage — which, Doug says, you can never have enough of. 

Overall the Olsons have found the structure meets their needs. The only thing they might have done differently would have been to make the building 90 feet wide. “When we have a semi and trailers in the building and lift the truck’s hood, it provides little space to walk around the vehicle at each end,” Christina explains.

“That, and I would have gone with 42-inch-side service doors, as opposed to the 36-inch doors we have now,” Doug adds. “Wider doors would have made moving things, like a welder or parts carts, outdoors easier.”

Morris: Clutter-Free, Comfortable Work Conditions

For years the Morris family had been making do, repairing and maintaining machines in a cramped and cold 40×60-foot Quonset-like building, dreaming of when they would build a modern shop. That time came a decade ago, when John Morris and his son, Will, invested in an 81×120-foot-long structure on their farmstead in Watertown, Wisconsin, west and north of Milwaukee.

Will explains that the structure’s front 80-foot area is dedicated to repair and maintenance. “The structure’s 81-foot width allows us to bring our 24-row planter in the shop and unfold it while still providing enough room at both ends of the planter to get around it easily,” Will says. “And we can easily bring in combines with their headers for service. Plus, the 20-foot sidewalls provide enough space so we can unfold combines’ power folding tops.”

The structure’s rear 60 feet offer storage for the family’s three semi trucks and trailers. “This area could be utilized for a work area in the future if we needed to expand shop space,” John says.

Office and Parts Storage Addition

Another feature is a 40×80-foot-long addition along the side. The addition’s front half hosts the office. The other end, storing parts, tools, and lubricants, is accessed from the shop through a service door. This room helps the family keep the work area as clutter free as possible.

“For example, our 55-gallon barrels of lubricants ride on carts that we can wheel out of the storage room to the shop and right next to the equipment being serviced,” Will notes. “All parts and many of our tools are kept in that room.”

Out in the shop the Morrises went a step further to keep floor space uncluttered by putting everything they could, such as work benches and toolboxes, on wheels. “That way they can be stored against sidewalls when not in use,” Will adds.

Heating and Air-Conditioning

This building is just short of 10,000 square feet but, thanks to an investment in floor heat, it costs about the same and sometimes even less to heat than their old shop. “That was one of the best investments we made,” Will says. “Now we can comfortably lay on the floor in the winter doing repairs or maintenance.”

Enhancing working conditions even further, the family invested in two 5-ton condensing units so they could air-condition the shop. “Yes, it [cost extra],” Will says. “But man, does it make a huge difference in the summer, if only to keep the humidity down in the building. If you are out in the shop every day, like we are, it’s worth every penny for better working conditions.”

The family also added two exhaust fans to remove vehicle and welding smoke, as well as bring in fresh air through an intake fan. That fan is located on the side of the shop opposite the exhaust fans. “Again, it was extra cost, but it makes a big difference to air quality,” Will points out. “And we are always hosting family and neighborhood events here, so air quality was important.”

A host of 5×6-foot windows provide abundant natural light. “So much so that some days we don’t have to turn on the ceiling lights,” Will says.