CLEARFIELD TWP — Adam Bergbigler wants to be a farmer, just like his dad, and now he can practice with a small-scale wooden replica of the family's barn.

Family friend Melvin Protzman handcrafted the barn as a Christmas gift for 7-year-old Adam, who uses it to mirror what he sees his father doing on the family farm.

Protzman, 58, has time to spare as he waits to receive a heart transplant.

Because he could get the call at any time, Protzman spends much of his time at home in Summit Township and cannot travel farther than two hours from Allegheny General Hospital.

“If they call me in the middle of the night, I've got to get up and go down there,” said Protzman.

He spent countless hours building the toy barn, which has a sliding door, glass windows and hundreds of tiny shingles.

“The fact that he would take the time out to make this, I thought was special,” said Nadine Bergbigler, Adam's mother. “It's truly a gift from his heart.”

The barn is based on the family's 40- by 60-foot barn, built from a kit and still used for cattle and hay.

“I'm the fourth generation and the barn came out of a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog,” said Mike Bergbigler, Adam's father. “I'm pretty sure it was built in 1918.”

The replica barn also includes a ramp so Adam can push his collection of miniature farm equipment inside.

“It's a two-floor barn, just like the one outside,” said Mike, a beef farmer who also raises corn, hay and oats. “There's a lot of craftsmanship and detail, and he built it off a picture with no plans or anything.”

Protzman's father and uncles were carpenters by trade and the family always had a knack for building furniture, Mike said.

Even so, Adam's barn is only the second model made by Protzman.

The first barn was made last year when Protzman's daughter Kayla, a horse lover, was planning her wedding.

She asked her father to build a card box, which he based on their family's barn.

“I'd just stand there and look at the barn my grandfather put up, when I needed help,” said Protzman, who came up with a 16-inch model that was much admired by Adam.

“He said, ‘Someday, Melvin, can you build me a barn?'” Mike said.

Protzman promised he would and secretly began working on Adam's barn in November.

Every so often, Adam would ask Protzman about the barn, but the boy had no idea it was already in the works, Protzman said.

When the finished barn was presented to him on Christmas Eve, Adam was stunned into silence.

“We tried to keep him from knowing I was doing it, and all along, I had it started and he didn't know it,” Protzman said with a chuckle. “I caught him off guard.”

“He just said, ‘Boy, this is beautiful,'” Mike remembers. “‘It's something I always dreamed about,' he said.”

Before starting Adam's barn, Protzman asked for a few photos for reference and Mike provided him with just four snapshots.

Since no plans were used, building the barn was more a matter of trial and error, Protzman said.

The most challenging part was replicating the exact slant of the roof, he added.

“I kept cutting scrap pieces until I got it to what it looked like in the picture, to how I liked it,” Protzman said.

Protzman used a brad nail gun to construct the barn and estimates he used more than 3,000 brads in the finished project.

Some of the boards were purchased and others were end boards from a scrap bin, Protzman said.

“I wanted different colors of wood — maple, red oak, pine, poplar — to give it character,” he said. “I like to use linseed oil; it really pops the grain out. It will change the color a little but it really brings the grain of the wood out.”

Until his illness, Protzman worked as a foreman at Wise Machine in Butler.

Protzman is a Status 2 transplant patient, which means he does not require intravenous medication and lives at home while waiting for an organ to become available, according to the American Heart Association.

His condition will be evaluated in March and possibly adjusted to Status 1B. Status 1B patients require special intravenous mediation to help their heart function while waiting.

Status 1A are top-priority patients, usually those who are critically ill, either in intensive care units or receiving life support therapies.

“It's a big accomplishment for him to be able to build something like this in his condition,” Mike said. “He'd do anything for anyone; it's unbelievable.”

Protzman said he was more than happy to build the barn for the son of his close friend.

“I did it because he's always there, a lot of my friends are there, since I've been on this list, and everybody just seems like they'll jump in and help me,” said Protzman. “When his little boy asked me and said, ‘I'd sure like one of those to play with,' it just seemed like the right thing to do.”