Roaming Story County in search of Barns

Yes, Saturday, Linda and I went looking for barns. We'd thought we might head west but the distance to points of interest was getting a little longer than we were thinking. Looking at the map, there were a few nice locations to the north; one was the Handsaker Barn (also known as the "Fernald Barn.")

Looking for specifics on where to find the barn, I found the following on a Story County Barn Tour and Picnic website:

The Handsaker barn, featured on the cover of the Spring 2003 edition of the Iowa Barn Foundation Magazine, is a spartan, unique square barn known widely as the "Fernald barn." William Handsaker bought the rich land, on which the barn stands, from the government in 1853 for $4 per acre. The barn was built in 1880 by J.W. Handsaker, great great grandfather of Gary Handsaker, who with his mother, Gloria, owns the farm now. Dale Handsaker, Gloria’s husband and Gary’s father, was a well-known Story County farmer until his death. The beautifully maintained house on the farm was built in 1875. Gary removed the shingle siding on the barn, brought back the original wood siding, and painted the barn red as it was originally. Interestingly, the Handsaker family sold some of their land so that the village of Fernald could be built.

Eight more barns were identified on the page so we had our mission. I made some quick notes, located the addresses on Google Earth, and we were on our way.

We made our way across rural Story County, trying to identify the barns and stay one step ahead of our gravel dust tail. It was interesting to see the "celebrity" barns but we both enjoyed the working barns every bit as much. The top two photos on the left edge of the collage are two that were particularly noteworthy.

The big photo with the red square barn is the Handsaker barn. It was probably the best maintained of the lot but didn't appear to still be in use like some of the others.

Another celebrity class barn would have to be the Rosenfeld Barn seen in the very small image in the right side of the collage. The history of that barn reflects a nationwide attraction, more for the residents than the structure.

The Rosenfeld Barn was built around 1918, on land George Rosenfeld purchased in 1873, to house a nationally recognized purebred herd of Aberdeen-Angus cattle. In 1923 the Rosenfeld herd had the International Grand Champion Aberdeen-Angus Cow at Chicago. And, in 1925 the herd produced the Grand Champion Herd of steers over all breeds at Chicago. The huge (96 feet by 66 feet) barn has a poured concrete foundation that goes up inside walls higher than usual. Cattle rubbed against the concrete instead of wood leaving less deterioration. The pegged barn has 27 four-paned windows for light and ventilation. Buyers from throughout the United States used to attend breeding stock sales at the barn. The barn passed from George to Carl to Clyde. It is now owned by Mrs. Beth Rosenfeld Young and Mrs. Ronald Rosenfeld.

The dairy barn at Iowa State University was a little disappointing. While the huge U-shaped structure was no doubt state of the art in its day, it was pretty clear that no cattle have been on site for a couple of years. We walked up through one leg of the barn and it appeared to be a very large shed... with stalls. You can see the northern faces of the twin legs of the barn in the photo in the top right.

Similar to the dairy barn, the horse barn at Iowa State is U-shaped; wider and not as tall, the enclosed lot actually had horses. We walked through one leg of the barn and saw handsome horses in nearly each of the stalls. A system of corrals fill the gap between the barn and the railroad to its north. The faces of this fine brick barn can be seen beneath the Handsaker Barn photo.

The three barn complex in the photo to the right of the ISU horse barn are the O’Neill Dairy-Hassebrock Barn. "The O’Neill Dairy, owned by brothers Clem and Henry, was an Ames institution in the 50’s and 60’s. The large cow herd provided about half of the milk consumed in Ames."

The history of the Bowman Round Barn seen in the lower right was a little thin on the Story County Barn Tour and Picnic site. It's still an interesting and pretty unique stucture for the area.