Author: iowabarnbook

 The Bruxvoort chicken house near New Sharon in Mahaska County, owned by Nancine Bruxvoort, was built in 1917. The flocks of chickens raised here were lucky to have plenty of space to roam inside. Note the numerous windows on the south side that provided natural light as well as fresh air when they were tilted open. It still exists as an example of bygone days, although it has not been in use for many years. In the intervening years a large tree has shaded the building, which would make it less than desirable for use today. (2023 photo)

Another example is a much smaller 1920s chicken house now at Lesanville, a historic village site in Ringgold County, east of Mt. Ayr along Hwy 2. It is referred to on this historic Ramsey farm as “Aunt Jennie’s chicken house,” where she fed both hens and roosters. In this view it is apparent how the tilted windows allow for ventilation but keep out rain. (2013 photo)

Stonemason extraordinaire. Richard and Bridget Buckley Cummings emigrated from Ireland in 1850 and settled in Floyd County east of Charles City. In 1875 they purchased 160 acres of land, and Richard built this small stone barn.

A Cummings great-granddaughter, Kathy McCann, took this photo in 2015 and recently sent a copy to me. On May 12, 2023, I discovered to my dismay that the loft had fallen due to storms in the area a few years earlier, although the tiny milk house on the right is still intact. See photo below.

Matt Crayne, naturalist with the Chickasaw County Conservation Board, explains that the colorful stones are glacier-transported fieldstone fragments of granite and other minerals that differ from the local bedrock. His colleague commented that some of the stones would have needed to be split in order to get the flat faces seen here.

Next to the tiny milk house was another amazing discovery. There is a solid concrete “fence” extending from the milk house to the barn, with 3-D images of a heart, spade, club, and diamond embedded in the concrete, as seen below. It may be that he was fond of playing cards in his spare time.

What an industrious immigrant he was: not only a farmer, but also a stonemason.

It is spring, the time to prepare the fields for planting. Over a century ago, it was common to be disking with five horses, as these men were doing in 1908.

Amish farmers use horses for all aspects of farming today. On May 11, 2023, in the Hazleton area, I saw a number of Amish farmers disking in a setting resembling the above photograph.

In 2022, an Amish farmer in Ohio was disking a huge field using seven horses. My Iowa Amish contact thought it unusual to be using seven horses, as five is common. Special attachments would be needed to hitch seven horses together. It wasn’t possible to ask the driver­ exactly what he was doing, but some observers suggest that an additional two younger horses were being trained in pulling the disk around the field. See the photo below.

A house of God first, then a barn. The barn pictured above was dedicated as a place of worship for a congregation of Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). The loft was actually the worship space while the ground level was used for livestock and grain storage. An article in the Oakland Herald quoted an Elder in a late 1800s prayer service who prophesied that the branch would scatter and the House of God would be inhabited by animals. That’s what happened.

The Mormon Farm Creek branch of Latter-Day Saints was first located in Mills County near Henderson. Pioneers settled along Farm Creek in the fall of 1849 and spring of 1850, using a church for their worship services. That church is now gone. In the spring of 1858 a branch of about 40 members was “raised up.” It was reorganized twice and the members met in Farm Creek school nearby until 1890 when the barn/church was finished at a cost of $1725. Membership declined when families moved away, and most of the remaining members left in the early 1920s or attended services in nearby towns. The barn then became a house for livestock.

For many years Harvey and Darlene Bolton owned the farm and used the barn. Harvey died in 1998, Darlene died in September of 2022, and the farm has been sold. Farm Creek was a landmark in the area, and a sign designating the Farm Creek School site is located at the driveway entrance to the house and barn.          (2023 photo)

Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits!  For the past three years Jay and Lori Straight have been raising New Zealand rabbits by the hundreds in the above barn. It’s an old barn, built in 1890 by Elisha Mahoney, with the overhang added 25 years ago for a tractor and other equipment.

Elisha Mahoney’s father Stephen and his wife Margaret settled in Maryland in the early 1800s and planned to join a group of Latter Day Saints going west when Margaret died suddenly. Undaunted by Margaret’s death, Steven headed down the Ohio River by steamboat with his 11 children, stopped in Kanesville, abandoned traveling further west, married a young woman who had helped him care for his children on the trip, and bought this farm in Harrison County.

One of six children of the second marriage, Elisha, born in 1860, became a farmer, stock raiser, and breeder of Norman horses, in addition to building a 30’ x 30’ home and the 50’ x 50’ brick barn seen here. Building a barn with two gable peaks was most unusual and building it of brick was also not common, but he operated a brick kiln so that made it easy. He even covered it with stucco and also added a brick wall down the middle. His Norman horses lived in high style.

The Straights bought the farm 46 years ago, removed the brick divider, and have adapted it for raising cattle and hogs, auctions, and the weddings of two of their children. They participate in rabbit shows in Iowa and surrounding states and win many ribbons. The New Zealand breed exists in five colors: black, blue, white, red, and broken (white with patches of red, black, or brown). Pick a color, they’re all here, and every six weeks over 100 are sold to Tom’s Meat Market in Omaha. It’s a great barn, filled with rabbits everywhere.

The celebration of Easter is a Christian tradition as well as a time to celebrate with family and friends. Easter Sunday in the Orthodox tradition is celebrated April 16 in Ukraine and  in many other countries.

Below are two historic Ukrainian Easter postcards. It is a hope that the war will end soon so their children can enjoy a peaceful spring as seen here, and that the farmers will be able to plant and harvest their crops.

The cirrus clouds pictured above are made up of delicate feathery ice crystals. Farmers especially watch these clouds with interest since cirrus clouds indicate an approaching change in weather.

I hope you have had a joyful Easter. May these antique postcards, one in Swedish, bring you to the end of a pleasant day.

Colorful murals exist in many Iowa cities. Carolyn Blattel-Britton (1955-2019), an artist from Zearing, painted this farm scene covering the side of a main street building in the Story County town of Collins. In 2022, forty-one years after this photo was taken, it still looks good, although trees on an adjacent property now obscure a view from the street.

Mechanicsville was platted in 1855 and was so named because some of the early settlers were mechanics. Farmers in that era fixed their own machinery or found a local blacksmith for machinery repairs. Note the barn, silo, pheasant, geese, corn, flowers, and stylized cedar trees. This town is in Cedar County, thus “HEAVEN AMONGST THE CEDARS,” are the words in the arch.

Railroads played a critical role in pioneer days before the existence of cars and trucks. Farm women went by train to nearby towns for household items, and the men shipped their livestock to market by train. The town is in O’Brien County, founded in the early 1870s. It was named after George Sanborn, president of the Iowa and Dakota Division of the Milwaukee Railroad, at that time called the McGregor and Missouri Railway. This small town even had an 18-stall roundhouse visible in the mural on the right. The last passenger train ran from Sanborn to Sheldon in 1960. 

Alton, another northwest Iowa town in nearby Sioux County, was laid out in 1872 but called East Orange for its first ten years. This huge mural features an American flag, flowers, rows of steel bins, a tractor, a combine, a steam engine, and children having fun. Look for murals in the towns you visit this summer.

This German Hausbarn, originally built in 1660 in the village of Offenseth in Schleswig-Holstein, is located in Manning, which was founded in 1881 by German immigrants from that state.

This barn was dismantled, shipped to Manning and re-assembled in the 1990s by German craftsmen, and is now the focal point of the Hausbarn-Heritage Park. The thatch came from Germany, dried before being shipped to Iowa, and was installed by the artisans. The photo of the thatch below reveals the thick layers of reeds effective in repelling water.

Hausbarns are still found in Germany. Sometimes the animals and family both live on the lower level, but often the family lives on the upper level and the animals on the lower level. This provides ease in caring for the animals, especially in wintry conditions. This design also helps to provide heat for the farm family, assuming they can endure the odor.

A few hundred feet to the south of the barn on top of the hill is Trinity Church, prominent in the area for over 125 years. After the congregation realized they could no longer survive financially, funds were raised by the Manning Heritage Foundation to move it to the Hausbarn-Heritage Park where it stands today.

In addition to the Hausbarn and church, the Leet-Hassler farmstead nearby has a gambrel barn, a 1915 Craftsman bungalow, and several other buildings that preserve an aspect of Carroll County’s farming heritage that is rapidly disappearing. Check the website for open hours to the Hausbarn and farmstead.

The Frye farm near Maysville is an example of a model farm, with this well-preserved barn as the focal point. The buildings, once white but now red, all have the original siding.

Susan Frye’s great-grandfather William, grandfather Arnold, and great-uncle Alfred collaborated to build the structures shown in this blog, as well as a brick home, garage, and chicken coop, between 1925 and 1935.

The barn was originally a dairy barn, then housed hogs until the early 1980s, followed by equipment storage, and now used for Susan’s Community Supported Agriculture and flower business. The farrowing barn and the crib, both pictured below, were used until the mid-1980s, at which time the crib became storage for lumber salvaged from the original buildings that dated from the late 1800s.

Susan’s father Bernard used the machine shop pictured below until the early 1990s for his projects as a woodworker, carpenter and antique car restorer. She and her husband Mike Kienzle bought the Frye homestead from her parents in 1994, which included a black walnut grove planted by her father in the early 1960s. Since that time they have added over 100 more fruit, nut, and other native trees. Susan and Mike are to be commended for their outstanding farm in Scott County.