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While driving around Iowa I have noted a continuing decline in the number of barns. Once the monarch of every Iowa farmstead, the barn has given way to more efficient metal buildings and, in some cases, no buildings at all.
Things change. As with threshing machines, windmills, the outhouse and the horse-drawn wagon the wooden barn is rapidly becoming a part of our past. And that's okay, I guess. Things change and we have to learn to change with them.
Still, I feel some sorrow in the loss of the barn. So much of what made a farm a farm several decades ago centered on the barn.
My paternal grandparents farmed a few miles west of Titonka in northern Iowa's Kossuth County. Until I was three we lived near Opa and Oma's farm and my earliest memories include their big white barn. That large barn was full of adventure. It's where Opa kept his retired work horses, Spot and Daisy. It's where Opa and my father and uncles milked a dairy herd twice a day. Where barn cats roamed freely. And where a large hay mow invited exploring.
For a farmer with dairy cows, the day began in the barn and usually ended there, too. I recall watching Opa's cows, mostly Holsteins, enter the barn and walk directly to their stanchions, just as some people always sit in the same pew at church.
Once the hobbles were placed on the rear legs of the cows to prevent them from kicking, milking was usually rather uneventful. Uncle Sterling had dairy barn skills. He grabbed a teat and squirted a stream of fresh milk directly at the delegation of barn cats which, wise to his tricks, gathered anxiously at his side.
Opa was a devout man not known for strong language. A cow could swat him with her tail only so many times, however, before he would bellow something in German that was best not translated into English.
Other barns have provided great memories, too. On a couple of occasions I spent some time on my Uncle Harold's farm. One day, at about eight years of age, I walked into the barn while one of his dairy cows was being artificially inseminated. No one had ever told me of such things so you can imagine my bewilderment when I saw a man with his hand… well, you can imagine my bewilderment.
Uncle Stoffer had dairy cows, too, and I recall watching him milk at dawn while, over the noise of the milking equipment, the early morning news from WHO Radio in Des Moines blared from the old wood-cabinet radio.
Barns came in many shapes and sizes. Uncle Irvin joked about the man who died in a round barn because "he couldn't find a corner to pee in."
Barns are splendid places for kids to play, though not necessarily the safest. In one cousin's barn we discovered an exciting pastime. The rope which lowered and raised the large hay mow door was still attached to the open door. We found that the door was a great counterweight, allowing us to grab the rope near the door's opening and, upon jumping, would lower us slowly to the floor of the hay mow. Of course, when we let go of the rope as we landed the big door slammed down again doing no good at all, I'm sure, to the door or its hinges.
One day my friend Wayne and I went pigeon hunting in the barn. When my mother learned we had shot those pigeons for no purpose other than to kill them, she was ticked. She demanded that we prepare the birds for the frying pan and then made us eat them. I always thought of those fried pigeons when served a puny chicken dinner at a big city convention hotel.
Barns remind me, too, of hard work. One of the most readily available summer jobs for teenagers in our community was helping put up hay and straw for area farmers. Stacking bales in the barn usually meant intense heat and a lot of dust. Thank God for the farmer's wife who, at midafternoon, brought a big jug of lemonade and a large pan of cake or cookies.
Barns bring back many memories ̶ memories of people, animals, sounds, aromas, activities and a vanishing lifestyle. It's sad to see them go.
(Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2026 by Huisman Communications.)