Round Barns

Here’s some more photos from the “Good Pictures” file. On day last June my daughter and I met at a truck stop on I-35. Afterwards, I drove over to Blairsburg to see the wind turbines and found this round barn, too.

The water in the foreground was a remnant of the massive flooding which hit Iowa last June.

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Next is the last photo I took of the round barn which stood on the farm where I grew up. This photo was taken on May 19, 2008. Six days later, on May 25th, the barn met its demise in a tornado. You can easily see that the old hollow tile structure was not in very good shape anymore, anyway…….basically, it was an obsolete dinosaur, too costly to maintain or restore. The roof was quite a feat of carpentry and engineering, though. I regret never taking photos up inside the haymow, where my siblings and I used to build hay bale forts and play hide-and-go-seek. You’re IT…….cover your eyes and count to 50 while the rest of us go hide! Be sure to holler, “READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!”, when you’re done counting.

Lastly, here is a photo of our barn…….taken by me in the late 1960’s for a 4-H photography project.

I don’t know for sure why my great-grandfather decided to put up a round barn in 1920. The original wooden barn had burned down shortly before that, and maybe that influenced his decision. Great-grandfather was born in 1869……on June 20, which became my birthday, also, many years later. I never knew him; he died in 1933 from complications of diabetes. One of his legs had to be amputated and the wound never healed…..the story I’ve been told is that he stayed in a tent out in the yard during the last weeks of his life and passed away there in August. My father was born in 1932, so he had no recollection of his grandfather, either, aside from stories told to him. Our garden was where the yard of the old house used to be, and sometimes when we were weeding and such, Dad would point to a spot and mention that Great-grandfather’s tent had been pitched right there.

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P.S. - The Blue Ridge Gal---who grew up in Iowa---kindly gave me this link to an amazing round barn story she posted on her blog last year.

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