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Around 1981, this barn in the Rural Municipality of Hanover was featured in a Manitoba Co-operator series on rural buildings. The original caption for the photograph is given below
Shaped in the traditional U-design of French farm buildings sometimes found in the old country or Quebec, this barn was started in 1943 when the 36-foot by 90-foot section on the left was completed. Two years later, the 38-foot by 74-foot ring wing was completed, with the 24-foot by 48-foot connecting wing added in 1947. The feed mill facility on the extreme left was added in 1960. In total, this barn provided the Wittick family of Niverville with about 7,700 square feet of ground floor space for their hog and earlier cattle operations. The Wittick barn holds a link with the province’s earliest agricultural history. John Wittick came to Manitoba in 1877, joined later that year by his wife, son Albert, and three daughters from Berlin [now Kitchener], Ontario. Two years later, he was hired as head carpenter and foreman to build Manitoba’s first grain elevator at Niverville, a round structure that was to handle the province’s formative efforts of grain export to Eastern Canada and beyond. It was pulled down in 1923 and the lumber was used to build another nearby barn, one that is featured in this series at a later date. The Witticks remained prominent in local affairs, from school to municipal to sports and musical duties. The farm was sold by retiring grandsons Norman and Eric Wittick in 1965 to Bill Redekop who has continued the hob operation. As was the case with most farms in Western Canada, the Wittick farmers were self-taught and self-sufficient in most trades. For example, when they added a third floor to the left wing in the 1950s, an elevator was also built by the brothers to hoist men and feed to a new laying flock which produced about 90 dozen eggs daily. The barn also features an automatic feed delivery system and a separate manure carrier system built by the owners for their herd of 250 to 300 hogs. The Wittick brothers have retired from farming and related enterprises and are now engaged in such activities as writing local histories and violin-making.
No information is available on the present status of the building.
Wittick Barn (circa 1981)
Source: Bob HainstockApproximate Site Coordinates (lat/long): N49.60584, W97.02477
denoted by symbol on the map above
See also:
Historic Sites of Manitoba: Manitoba Co-operator Rural Buildings Series
This page was prepared by Bob Hainstock, Ed Ledohowski, and Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 30 January 2021
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