Old Homes, Buildings and Barns
Our next stop is the small rural town of Woodbine, on the western edge of Iowa, a drive of just over 300 miles. Statistics show that Iowa’s population has grown increasingly urban in the past decade as residents continue to leave rural counties and flock to a handful of larger cities. The indicators can be seen in the architecture. While we passed a number of beautiful old Victorian and Craftsman farmhouses, others, like this long forsaken home, were in ruin.
Iowa, a huge corn producing state, is part of the Corn Belt, a region of the Midwestern United States where corn is the predominant crop. The U.S. produces 40% of the world crop. With spring fast approaching, the fields were tilled and ready for the coming season.
As we passed through rolling farmland, we couldn’t help but notice brightly colored designs painted or attached to many of the barns, so we decided to find out what they meant. They are called barn quilts and while cloth quilts are usually made up of a series of squares of the same pattern placed together, a barn quilt is almost always a single square.
In many communities, an organizing group-an arts council, a quilt guild, or simply a motivated bunch of residents-work together to organize their barn quilts into a trail. Some are guided walks in a downtown area that includes historical buildings. More often, quilt trails take visitors on a drive through the countryside where barn quilts are mounted on farm buildings, on homes, along fences, and sometimes on freestanding posts. A quilt trail may include stops at galleries, farm stands, wineries and other points of interest that make the journey a day-long event.
Enjoy the barn quilt as we move on to the next stop.
Leisa
