A group of students at Genoa Middle School, who currently have legislation pending in the Ohio House of Representatives, recently submitted an Amendment to their pending bill – House Bill 143, which proposes making the barn the state historical architectural structure for the State of Ohio. Based on the wishes on the head of the House State Government Committee, the girls narrowed the type of barn to propose the Hand-Hewn Barn as the new state symbol. A hand-hewn barn is a barn constructed manually through the use of heavy instruments like an axe or a chisel. In order to learn more about hand-hewn barns, the girls, along with their teachers, met with Ric Beck, the current president of Friends of Ohio Barns, a state wide non-profit organization which began in 2001. The focus of the Friends of Ohio Barns is to raise awareness and promote the preservation of Ohio’s great agricultural icons: the barn. Beck shared pictures, historical information and the tools used in constructing a hand-hewn barn.