Author: iowabarnbook

Pioneers made their way across Iowa, beginning in the 1830s. The lines on this map approximate the patterns of land acquisition during settlement as families moved from southeast to northwest between 1833 and 1870.

Pockets of settlement occurred in every part of the state. Norwegians arrived in the Decorah area and surrounding counties in the early 1830s. Immigrants from the Netherlands settled in Pella around 1846. German immigrants settled in many areas around 1850, and in northwest Marshall County brothers and sisters of several related families immigrated from Ireland between 1848 and 1850.

Barns were a necessity for these early pioneers, and their creativity and ingenuity was evident in their buildings. The Gehlen barn was constructed in 1839 by immigrants from Luxembourg who settled near St. Donatus. This Jackson County barn, believed to be the earliest one in Iowa, is located on Highway 52, minutes from both Dubuque and Bellevue.

Now the barn’s focus has changed. It hosts parties, family reunions, concerts, craft fairs, barn tours, and more, as well as a brewery. It is a great example of the continued use of a barn (2012 photo). See more of the Gehlen barn story in Iowa Barns yesterday and today, page 55.

(Map published by the Malcolm Price Laboratory School, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, 2003)

The Nosbisch barn in Chickasaw County near New Hampton, honored as a Century Farm in 2010, has a barn with an amazing history. In 2022, it was also honored by Wallaces Farmer as “Iowa’s Most Beautiful Barn”.

How was it built? In 1926, a stonecutter spent an entire year cutting and placing hundreds of granite stones of varying colors to construct the eight-foot high foundation.

Pictured below shows the huge glacier-deposited stones in one small area of the foundation. The large light-grey granite boulder on the left measures 3 feet x 1 foot. Imagine cutting and fitting hundreds of these heavy stones in place. In Blog #77 (June 4) is a barn in adjacent Floyd County that also has glacial erratic stones in the foundation.

After the foundation was finished, the loft was built. The loft entrance was an earthen ramp, making it a bank barn. Three openings were made in the loft floor so that the hay and straw could be dropped down to the basement level. There was room for 60 loads of loose hay, and straw from 40 acres of oats, but over 50 years ago, large and small bales became the norm.

Inside the basement of the barn there was space for 14 draft horses and stanchions for 28 cows, as well as concrete feeders and room for milk handling and feed storage. This level has been altered to make it suitable for the beef cattle they raise today. 

Randy and Morgan Nosbisch are the fourth generation of their family on this farm; their sons are the fifth generation.

This striped round barn, located in Clayton County on Highway 52 south of Guttenberg in eastern Iowa, is like no other Iowa barn. The 36-inch wide vertical sections are metal (painted white), crimped to fit together with the neighboring sections. The roof structure is made up of 15 sections giving it the appearance of a dome as viewed from outside.

Louis Friedlein designed this barn and hired it built in 1914. It is 72 feet in diameter, has five doors, a cupola topped by an unusual aerator, and a 12-foot diameter wood stave silo inside. It is also a bank barn, with the earthen ramp up to the entrance built between two retaining walls, one wall visible on the far left.

It was originally a general-purpose barn, with stanchions for dairy cattle around the silo, as well as a milk room and pens for other livestock. On the upper level was a granary, a feed room, and a large loft that extended around the silo.

It is still in use today as a cattle barn, owned by Larry Friedlein, grandson of Louis. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

 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.