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Big Red Barns And Old Farm Bells
Dave Rasdal
Aug. 20, 2008 10:00 am
Iowa and Big Red Barns have gone together like peanut butter and jelly since plows first furrowed the prairies.
So, it was with pleasure that I enjoyed a two-hour tour of two big red barns - one built with local lumber in 1864 and the other built from a "kit" in 1888 - on the Rob Medberry farm about five miles north of Volga.
While I wrote about these barns in my Ramblin' column in today's Gazette, I didn't have room for everything I wanted to include.
First, it's fantastic that Rob, 43, is carrying on as the fifth generation farmer on land first farmed by James Kerr in 1856. Second, it's admirable that anyone would want to keep these old buildings around while so many of them have literally fallen by the wayside.
"The old barns just aren't so practical any more," Rob admits, pointing to round hay bales stored in the 1888 barn made for square ones. Too many interior support poles obstruct easy movement and the low overhead of the basement door means he can barely get his new skid loader, (not really that big) in and out to remove cow manure.
The idea of a "kit" barn jibes with Sears Roebuck & Co. that is well-known for selling "kit" houses in the early 1900s. Information I've gathered from Internet searches indicates Sears might have begun selling "kit" barns as early as 1895. That's still several years after the Kerr barn was assembled with parts delivered by railroad car.
The 1864 barn was built from scratch, using red elm from nearby Wadena. And, as Rob pointed out, many of the other structures on the farm were also built with local lumber, sometimes from whatever trees needed to be thinned from a windbreak.
In fact, in 1989, Rob and his father, Glen, put up a building framed and floored with local logs.
"Dad and I cut the trees and hauled them up to Eldorado, to Vagt's Sawmill, and drug them back," Rob says. "It sure didn't save time."
A couple of other items of interest on this farm that's been in the same family for more than 150 years and didn't get electricity until 1947.
Three cisterns used to collect rainwater for use in the house and at the barns. One was removed, one has been closed and the other is still used to water cattle near the 1888 barn. It's 20 feet deep and 12 feet in diameter, so it holds a lot of water.
Also, a bell sits high on a post near the back door of the two-story limestone house that was built in 1860. As Rob explained, every farm had a bell used just like the school bells of old, to signal people too far away to hear anyone shout. On the farm, the bell called hands in for lunch, dinner and in case of emergency.
"When the men would be out in the field," Rob says, "you could ring the bell and they'd hear it for miles."