Hanson Barn celebrates eight years on All-State Barn Tour

A steel latch clicks as Nola Hanson opens the stacked double doors on the side of her two-story barn in rural Mingo Wednesday. She walks inside and quickly points out several items that are displayed during the All-State Iowa Barn Tour, which Hanson’s barn now has been a part of since 2004.

“I set up displays, and put signs on this saying, ‘What is this?” Hanson said as she pointed at an antique potato plow. “What is that back there? It’s a little chicken house. Some of these old things we’ve found on the farm over the years.”

The barn has stood on the Hanson’s family farm since the 1880s. The structure will be available for exploration during the 2012 All-State Barn Tour on Saturday, Sept. 22, and Sunday, Sept. 23, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The sole Jasper County barn featured on the All-State tour, Hanson’s farm also is Nola Hanson’s childhood home. Her sister, Margret Van Ginkel, assists in guiding the visitors’ tours during the two-day event.

The All-State Barn Tour began in 2001 by the Iowa Barn Foundation in an effort to encourage barn res-toration and educate youth on the importance of agriculture in Iowa.

Hanson’s barn sits on a Heritage farm, belonging to her family since 1856. According to the newsletter she provides barn visitors, Hanson’s great-great grandfather John Ashton purchased the 160-acre farm for $1,000. After settling in Iowa following travels on the American West Coast during the 1849 Gold Rush, through England and Australia, her great-grandfather and Norway native Hans Hanson married Ashton’s daughter, Mary, and purchased the farm from his father-in-law in 1870 for $1,000.

Hanson’s father, George Hanson, would speak of a tornado that defaced the barn in the 1930s promoting an altered roof style, but the tale never has been proven.

“And as the carpenters pointed out, this was actually the end of the barn,” she said as she stopped roughly three-fourths of the way through the barn’s haymow. “It’s been added on to, and you can tell if you look at the structure you can see how the construction is a little bit different. The older guys talk about how one time it was hit by a tornado, but we don’t know. I say in my newsletter, ‘If only the walls could talk.’”

The farm primarily raised cattle and livestock, Hanson said, stabling horses in the barn and employing up to four hired men during the 1930s. During the tour, she highlights the raised roof of the 32 foot by 58 foot barn. Hanson said carpenters that worked on stabilizing the structure noticed tongues in the haymow support pillars that suggest they once clasped the bottom floor of the barn. She said the roof was raised to make room for baled hay which replaced the loose hay once stored in the loft.

Major structural work was done to the barn in 2003, when seven three-fourths black steel rod sets were installed to keep the barn’s walls together. Hanson said they were about to lose an entire wall before the stabilization.

The Hanson Barn tour is interac-tive, with a Powerpoint presenta-tion set up atop a baby chick incubator from Colfax on the second story showing visitors the incuba-tion process.

According to the Iowa Barn Foundation’s website, this year’s tour has been pushed up to avoid conflict with the harvest. For more information about the Iowa Barn Foundation visit www.iowabarnfoundation.org.

Mike Mendenhall can be contacted at (641) 792-3121 ext. 422 or via email at mmendenhall@newtondailynews.com.