In the family of farm buildings, the barn is a rotund grandfather — doting and welcoming. With its huge lap, the barn takes in the summer’s harvest of hay and during winter gathers livestock through its doors.

So there is something desperately lonely about an empty barn, not quite abandoned, but no longer useful. As the number of operational family farms continues to shrink in America, barns become the most obsolete buildings on homesteads. Other smaller outbuildings and ells are easier to maintain and are handy as workshops and garages. And houses remain human habitats. But empty barns become neglected giants.

Judy Steele of Troy thinks that’s lamentable — so much so that she was moved this year to found the Maine Barns & Rural Heritage Program. The mission of the fledgling program is to educate barn owners and the public about the historical importance of agricultural structures and promote agrarian heritage as a tool for economic development.

About two years ago, Steele moved back to Troy after acquiring a farm that has been in her family for about 100 years. It is no longer a working farm, and the barn had begun to show signs of decline.

This winter, during time off due to the ice storm, Steele went online with her computer and offhandedly entered a search for the word “barn,” wondering what options there might be to repair her barn. “I had an Internet moment,” she said of the search results.

She found a network of regional organizations dedicated to barn preservation, and most importantly, she found BARN AGAIN!, a national organization based in Denver that lends its expertise to individuals and groups. What Steele did not find was any existing organized effort to preserve the barns of Maine. So she contacted the director of BARN AGAIN!, Mary Humstone, who is now slated to attend the Fall Harvest Festival at the Kinney Farm on Knox Ridge in the Waldo County town of Knox Sept. 11-12.

Humstone’s visit is intended to help “steer the ship” of barn preservation as the Maine Barns Program takes shape. BARN AGAIN!, which began in 1986, has focused on helping farmers preserve farm buildings by adapting them to new agricultural uses. For example, Humstone said, a farmer might stop milking cows and raise only crops on his farm. With no hay or dairy cows in the barn, the farmer can’t justify spending much money to maintain the barn.

BARN AGAIN! looks for ways to “refit” barns for another use without altering their appearance. That could mean conversion to machinery or grain-corn storage, hog farming, a workshop, or a retail outlet for farm products.

Word is already getting around about the Maine program, Steele said. One woman telephoned Steele to say the barn she owned was the last one still standing along the road where she lived. The others had been torn down over the years, and the woman was concerned that her barn would continue to deteriorate and eventually collapse or be torn down.

Driving along the roads bordering farmland in Waldo County, it seems inconceivable that any byway could end up barnless. But a closer look at a few of those barns shows how vulnerable they are.

Bob Bennett, a history teacher at Mount View High School in Thorndike, does not claim to be an expert on barns, but he is a “barn buff.” It was for that reason that Steele conscripted Bennett as she organized the barn program’s steering committee.

During a short barn tour last week, Bennett pointed out the typical and unusual features of five barns on a 2-mile portion of Turner Ridge Road in Palermo.

The family of Stanley Foster Jr. has lived on the family farm since his grandfather bought it in 1898. Ten years ago, Foster quit milking cows, and his barn is now empty. Like many barns in central Maine, Foster’s barn is attached to the house by an ell. Few connected farms were built before 1800, and they are rare outside New England. Maine was the epicenter for the style.

Connected farms became popular for a number of reasons, according to Bennett. Overall, the style was an attempt to streamline the farm operation at a time when farming was becoming mechanized and commercialized.

The style mimicked the more urbane town houses, in which the house and ell were connected to a horse stable. The configuration creates a protected area between the barn and house called the dooryard. It was there that many common chores were done: sheep shearing, clothes washing, chicken plucking.

The connected structure also allowed protected passage to the barn, regardless of weather. The downside was, of course, fire. A fire in any portion of the connected farm could mean a total loss — almost a certainty in the 19th century.

New England barns have also been mobile. Foster’s barn at one time was located across the road, but early this century was moved closer to the house. It is also typical of Maine barns in another very Yankee way: The less visible back of the building was finished off with inexpensive wood shingles rather than clapboard.

“No Yankee farmer was going to spend more money than he had to for something that few people would ever see,” Bennett said.

Another characteristic of New England barns is the main doors on the gable ends of the building. The effect of that feature in the barn’s interior is one of continuity. Foster’s barn has long, open sightlines lengthwise. Despite the barn’s size, it would not been easy to keep a view of any animal shenanigans in the barn.

Foster’s barn already shows the first signs of disuse: The roof is peppered with finger-size holes. If a new roof is not put on, the holes will rot with rain, then widen enough to allow water onto the rough-hewn timbers framing the building.

“If you can keep a decent roof on and the foundation level, these barns can last forever,” Steele said.

Down the road a bit from Foster’s barn, Richard Bilyard owns a rambling complex of ells and barns, one of which was built around 1788. He believes it is one of the oldest buildings in Palermo. The largest of the barns now has gaping holes in the roof.

Since buying the property in 1977 — it was not being farmed even at that time — Bilyard has tried to keep up with repairs, but the costs are too great. Repairing the big barn would cost about $60,000, he said.

“Whatever capital I have at my age, I’m not going to spend it on barn repair,” said Bilyard, a retired architect.

In fact, at one time he agreed to sell the timber from the two barns to a contractor, but the deal fell through.

That’s the kind of “deal with the devil” Steele does not want barn owners to be faced with any more. She envisions the Maine Barns Program making grant money available to assist barn owners in repairs. She said state legislators have already shown interest in the idea and are considering introducing legislation at the next session.

Eastern Maine Development Corp. is currently exploring the economic development potential of cultural heritage tourism, according to Chris Shrum, an economic development specialist with that agency.

“First, we’d need to identify the significant barns and write a story around that,” he said. “You need to educate and pass on information in an appealing way.”

In part, that would mean developing an infrastructure for tourism in farming areas, including places to eat and sleep.

This summer Bennett applied for a grant that would equip some of his high school students with cameras and film to begin taking an inventory of the barns in the towns in SAD 3.

“We need to begin documenting the condition of the barns,” he said.

How long would that take?

Hard to tell, Bennett said: “No one knows how many barns are out there.”