MORRIS _ In 1964, when Harold and Theresa Sorensen bought their farm on Bourne Hill Road in Morris, the barn roof was leaking.
The 40-by-80-foot post-and-beam structure was straight and square, but Harold Sorensen knew it wouldn't last long if he didn't act.
``The barn was beautiful, but the water poured in whenever it rained, and that had to stop,'' he recalled Thursday.
He re-roofed the barn, and 44 years later, the imposing structure is a century old and in excellent condition.
The Sorensens believe it to be Otsego County's first three-story barn.
``After we moved up here, I found a newspaper article from the 1908 New Berlin Gazette,'' said Theresa Sorensen, ``and it said this was the first three-story barn in the county.''
According to an inscription on the outer wall, it was built by Chris Hoose & Sons in 1908.
Built into a hillside not far from state Route 23, the Sorensen barn is engineered and landscaped so one can always get in and out on nearly level ground.
With stalls and stanchions on the first floor, it is laid out so hay and feed can be dropped down a chute to each animal.
It must have been a dairy farm for decades, delivering milk in cans to a nearby creamery, said Harold Sorensen.
``When we moved here, the creamery was still there, but falling down,'' he said.
In the summer, the farmer would have transported milk cans by wagon. And in the winter, it's likely he used the large red sleigh, which is still parked on the second floor.
The Sorensens, parents of seven sons, moved to Morris from Plainfield, N.J., after visiting upstate New York for a while.
``We had friends who lived near here, and when we were up, we saw this place was for sale,'' Theresa Sorensen said.
The house that came with the 74-acre farm needed a lot of work, she noted. ``We're still working on it; I want to do those front windows.''
Harold Sorensen said the house was a big chore.
``The woman who had the place before us must have had 30 cats, and when we got here you couldn't even go upstairs,'' he said. ``I had to rip everything out up there and start over.''
But except for the roof, the adjacent barn was in fine shape, from stone foundation to roof boards, and though Sorensen has made alterations over the years to accommodate sheep and chickens, it remains largely unchanged from a century ago.
