Former Lynden feed barn transformed into three-court pickleball hub on fourth-generation farm

Landon Van Dyk, 44, turned a building that was built in 1974 for manure storage into The Pickleball Barn — a brightly lit, three-court indoor facility sitting amid hulking farm buildings on a 600-acre property between Lynden and Bellingham. Van Dyk sold the farm’s cows in 2020, a move he called painful after a season when the farm was breaking even and his father, Bud, was getting older; the conversion repurposes space once tied to a working 1,000-cow dairy into recreational courts and a new social center for players.

The structure’s history is plain: built for manure storage, later used as a feed barn, and after the 2020 herd sale it stored hay, grain, seed and minerals before Van Dyk laid out three courts indoors. The family traces to great-grandfather Peter, who homesteaded here after moving from Michigan about 120 years ago, marking the property as a fourth-generation farm. Van Dyk frames the decision to keep farming while finding other uses for buildings in one short line: "I love farming, and it’s kind of in your blood."

Play sessions at The Pickleball Barn are practical and social. The courts are described as brightly lit, and between games players sit around a firepit where, as regular Keith Mader wrote, "guys sit, joke, catch up and laugh until (their) sides ache." Mader also noted that "those same chairs have held heavier moments — men sharing job losses, marriage struggles, health battles, grief," making the venue both sport court and informal support hub. A photograph shows Van Dyk, middle left, chatting with other players around the firepit as they wait for the next game.

Finding the barn at night remains part of the ritual. There is no formal address, the approach is dark — "pitch black when you park" — and a dependable regular, Keith Mader, guides newcomers by sending a Google aerial photo with hand-drawn arrows. Arrival is usually confirmed not by a sign but by sound: "pock-POCK. Pock-POCK," the familiar rhythm of pickleball on indoor courts.

The Lynden conversion is a local example of how rural property can adapt as pickleball grows; the sport is now one of the nation’s fastest-growing, with courts appearing in parking lots, on tennis courts, in driveways and even atop the Space Needle. On Van Dyk’s property, the three-court Pickleball Barn has become a practical response to economic pressure and a new kind of gathering place on a 600-acre, fourth-generation farm.