With barn wood a hot commodity in home decor, it is now a target for thieves in Barren County looking for a more lucrative payday than they have for scrap metals. 

Thieves have targeted three barns in Barren County, where in one case they ripped the wood off an entire side. The Barren County Sheriff’s Office wants to stop these thefts before they become a trend. 

Unlike scrap, these barns are used to protect equipment, animals and crops and are causing farmers to take a hit to their budgets, sometimes in the thousands of dollars.

“I worked one two weeks ago, and they took off one side of the whole barn,” sheriff’s office spokesman Deputy Mike Houchens said. “Right now we’re thinking that they are doing this at night. They are targeting barns that are off the roadways or not near any houses. You can pull your truck on the backside of a barn and pry the lumber, and no one will know you’ve been there until the morning.

“I know of at least three,” Houchens said. 

Thieves are not targeting any particular part of the county. Two of these thefts have occurred on the eastern side of the county, and one was on the northern side.

“Sooner or later we would hope, since they are pretty much dismantling barns, that somebody is going to catch them doing that,” Houchens said. “This takes manual labor and takes time to do so. It’s something we knew was going on lawfully. At one time, people were buying lumber off of farmers, but now they are stealing it.

“They are taking the lumber on the outside of the barn and reselling to flooring manufacturers,” he said. “There have been people in our area, going around and talking to farmers and giving them money for old barns. It’s kind of like recycling. It’s the same MO (as scrap) but it’s just now we’re dealing with the siding and lumber off of barns as opposed to scrap.

“From what I’ve gathered, it’s more fruitful than the collection of scrap,” he said. “There’s tons of old barns, but farmers are still using these barns.”

If the entire back side of a barn is removed, a farmer may not notice it until his farming equipment has been exposed to the elements.

“It’s a burden on the farmer financially to replace this lumber on the side of these barns,” Houchens said.

“This is something that we’re going to pay particular attention to in our patrolling around the county in looking at barns,” he said.

Sheriff’s deputies will also be calling flooring manufacturers who buy this type of wood to find out who they are buying from. 

“We’re trying to prevent it from becoming a trend,” Houchens said.

— Follow Assistant City Editor Deborah Highland on Twitter attwitter.com/bgdnnewseditor or visit bgdailynews.com.