At Barren Heights, we hold to four main tenets when it comes to serving our families: to ensure families always feel loved, accepted, welcomed, and safe. We live out these tenets in multiple ways—from making our Retreat Center and events fully accessible, to offering allergy-friendly and special dietary foods, to training our volunteers to be inclusive and inviting.
In 2025, we identified a need that would greatly benefit our retreats: increasing the safety and comfort of the New Barn basement for families to use during severe weather events. From that need, the New Barn Basement Renovation Project was born.
As you may have noticed, severe weather has become increasingly common in our area, with an average of 41 tornadoes annually in Kentucky over the past 10 years (source). Knowing that severe weather is an unpredictable possibility, we have begun a new renovation project to bring greater comfort, functionality, and emergency preparedness to our existing New Barn basement.
Currently, the space is mostly unfinished, but soon it will be transformed into a cozy, finished area complete with comfy seating, a kitchenette with ample storage, and a generator to keep the lights on, maintain temperature, and to power medical devices and refrigerate medications when necessary. The space will also feature a calming corner with books and sensory activities to ease anxiety for both our guests and volunteers.
Safety is deeply important to Barren Heights and to our families. We want to honor that by creating a space that provides protection for our families but also brings peace—helping calm little ones (and their adults!) and offering reassurance to those who rely on electricity for medical needs.
Above are photos of the early stages of this project. Please join us in prayer for the workers the renovation and for this space to provide the peace, safety, and security our families need during emergency situations. If you would like to support Barren Heights—either by helping fund this project or our summer respite retreats for special needs families—please click here.
