ORONO – Some of Winston Pullen’s happiest times were spent rooting around in people’s barns, searching for old-fashioned farm equipment that could be displayed at the University of Maine’s Page Farm and Home Museum.

“Going in old barns would bring back memories. He’d get real excited and start telling stories – it was incredible,” said Larry Wade, a friend of the longtime UM agriculture professor and administrator who grew up on a farm in Monson.

Wade was one of several friends who talked about Pullen Saturday during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Winston E. Pullen Carriage House that is planned to open next year.

The new building, which will help alleviate exhibit space and storage problems, will house the old tractors, balers, threshers, mowers and wagons that Pullen loved to gather.

The professor died six years ago after helping to rescue from demolition the barn that now houses the museum artifacts and that predates the 1865 creation of the university. The museum complex also includes a mid-19th century one-room schoolhouse that had been located in Holden.

After the recent completion of a $52,000 fund-raising campaign, work is set to begin within a month on the two-story, 40-foot-by-52-foot carriage house, museum director Patricia Henner said Saturday.

The foundation and shell will be erected in the spring and exhibits will be moved in over the summer.

Another $30,000 is needed to pay for insulation, electricity and heat, said the director, who is confident the money will be forthcoming.

People realize how much time and energy Pullen devoted to the museum, she said.

Robin Arnold of Orono, a friend who proposed to then President Fred Hutchinson in 1992 that a carriage house be built in Pullen’s honor, said Saturday that, “if it wasn’t for Win, this place wouldn’t be here.”

Speaking to the more than 60 people who attended the morning ceremony, including UM President Peter Hoff and former president Hutchinson, Pullen’s daughter, Janet Searles of East Greenwich, R.I., said her father had been “floored” when he learned that a building was to be named for him.

“He never sought the limelight. He never expected recognition,” she said. “Dad believed in what he was doing … he believed the farming community was the backbone of the state. As a farm boy he was born and bred to believe that.”

The new carriage house will allow the museum to change exhibits and accept new acquisitions, according to Nancy MacKnight, chair of the board of directors, who said much of the farming machinery, which dates from 1865 to 1940, is in storage.

“The museum is in desperate need of space,” she said.