About the Artist
Dr. Kroeger’s career includes a 30-year dental practice and four years in the Navy. Now retired, he paints barns in the oil impasto technique. He frames the paintings with reclaimed wood from the century-old barns, adding more history to his art.
2021 Barn Painting Stories
The Crosley Collector
Even though I painted this 19th-century barn year ago, I took a different approach this time, featuring the old rusted auto in the foreground and placing the barn in the background. After all, the vehicle was a Crosley, which goes back to my hometown of Cincinnati and Paul Crosley, Jr., inventor of this auto and the entrepreneur who started WLW radio, the far-reaching voice of the Midwest. And, it’s hard not to love this vintage car, which, like old barns, represents a time in America when life was much different than today’s world.
The Crosley sat there patiently for me to sketch it and take reference photos in November, 2018. I found out, after talking with Beverly Yingst recently, that it’s now gone – into rehab, thanks to her husband Ned, who owns the farm with his wife. A Crosley aficionado, Ned restores these old cars in his barn, a passion that traces back to his youth when he saw the cars being built in 1946 in the nearby Marion, Indiana, plant. Crosley car production reached its peak of 25,000 per year in 1948. Four years later the dream ended. Still, the old cars are out there, as Bev advised me. “If you run across any in your travels,” she said, “please let us know. Ned loves to restore them.”
Thanks to Bev and Ned, the barn’s original siding frames this painting, adding a bit of antiquity to the piece. A few years ago Ned resided part of the barn, taking advantage of an offer at the state fair in Indianapolis. Ned took local wood to the fair and had it cut into siding in the sawmill in pioneer village. That was much more authentic than buying it at Home Depot; plus the old siding could be repurposed into frames for rustic barn paintings. And, for all those car buffs and barn lovers, this painting remembers two gems, preserving two more pieces of our vanishing landscape.
Prolific
One of the few people who love barns more than I do is Mike Copp, who owns this one – along with a few others that I’ve been fortunate to paint. When Ron and I visited it, the barn clearly was on its last legs, despite having a sturdy metal roof. Boards, missing in a few places, allowed light to pass through – along with snowflakes that were beginning to fall. Inside the saw-cut lumber hinted that the barn was built around 1900. Nonetheless, the barn still served a function: a farm vehicle and supplies were being stored.
Snow Flurries
Ron wanted me to look at his neighbor’s barn, just south of Ron’s farm, which we did on a chilly November afternoon. Wind and snow flurries made the temperature feel as if in the teens. But, inside the former log cabin – now the Hall’s farmhouse – we warmed up and met octogenarians Lloyd and Juanita. After 64 years of marriage, they were still devoted to each other. C’est l’amour.
Although they moved to the 40-acre farm in 1962, they showed us the deed to the farm, dated 1840. The little barn, the typical size for that era, may be original since the primary support for several beams were uncut logs. The barn builder must have been in a hurry. Maybe winter was coming.
The Halls were kind enough to let us take barn siding for the picture frame, which adds a bit of nostalgia, helping to remember the sacrifices the early pioneers made in clearing the ground and growing crops. They worked the land in the heat of summer and the cold of winter, which, I’m sure, was much colder than the snow flurries we faced on our visit. Such were the early settlers of our great country.
Three Silos and Three Generations
The sign, below one eave of this large barn, states, “19 Ray Cormany and Sons 59.” And, though we didn’t get a chance to go through it, barn scout Ron told me that the family uses the barn in raising hogs and cattle as well as corn, soybeans, and wheat. And everybody pitches in – all three generations, which includes Ray, his two sons, and three grandsons, proving that farming is in their blood.
Although in most of my paintings the barn usually takes center stage, this scene was a bit different. The three silos, especially the iconic blue Harvestore, all clustered together, seemed to clamor for attention. So I painted the Harvestore a more vibrant blue than its actual color, giving it and its two neighbors a bit more emphasis than the barn, which, unlike many old wooden barns with attractive gambrel roofs, serves its masters well – all three generations of them.
Photogenic
On our November, 2018, barn tour – on a bone-chillingly cold day – I asked Ron to stop at this old barn, a striking scene. Weeds and several hay bales sat in the foreground, while large hardwood trees framed the barn and a storage shed. A reddish tank silhouetted against a backdrop of trees, their colors muted in the distance. The barn’s metal roof, a bit warped here and there, had done its duty: the structure appeared to be stable – as did the massive silo. It was a composition I could paint again and again and never get tired of it.
Unfortunately, with time constraints and frigid temperatures, Ron and I didn’t knock on the farmhouse door, hoping that we’d be able to contact the owners later. I’m sure there’s a story or two just waiting to be discovered.
600 West
As barn scout Ron Myer and I drove by this old gray barn, it looked so forsaken – sitting all alone and not far from Route 600 West. A sapling had grown into a tall tree, hiding much of the barn, which, I felt, deserved to be shown – and not hidden. A grove of new trees, probably only 20-30 years old, filled in most of the background, though a tan-colored field in the distance hinted that this once was an active farm.
Weeds and brambles occupied most of the foreground, and a few browned milkweed-like pods, supported by long stems, wavered in the wind. Any environmentalist would love this back-to-nature scene, as I did – an old weathered barn, its boards warped and missing, its haymow doors gone, but remnants of fencing still surviving. However, many years ago someone, presumably still using the barn, invested in a metal roof, which has been the barn’s salvation. Though Ron and I visited it in November, 2018, it may be gone by now – and, along with it, the story of the farm and its owners. Regardless, I’m happy to have captured a little piece of Americana, which, like so many other old barns, represents a part of our vanishing landscape.
Vanishing
As barn scout Ron and I passed this old barn, tucked away in the weeds, I asked him to stop. Not far off Route 200 West and fairly close to Wilson Lake, the barn appealed to me: weathered siding, a few missing window panes and, thanks to someone, a sturdy metal gambrel roof, which has kept it from further deterioration. A small white shed, mostly hidden by overgrowth, and another outbuilding, hidden even more than the shed, added some interest – as did stems and colored leaves in the foreground. I decided to replace the solitary metal post with a wooden fence to add an element of agriculture to the scene. A chicken insisted on being represented as well.
The Bicentennial (Gray barn)
Indiana has over 200 bicentennial barns, scattered throughout the state. This is one of them, owned by 85-year-old Bonita, “Bonnie,” Martin, whose deceased husband Glenn had roots tracing back to the original farmer. Glenn was the great-great-grandson of Stephen Martin, who bought a tract of 200 acres from the government in 1837. In fact, Bonnie still has the deed, signed by President Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of our country. They also cherish an old oil lamp, used when the family patriarch had built a traveler’s lodge, called the Martin Inn – in an area later called Martinburg. The inn also served as the first school in the area – with Stephen Martin as teacher. Mr. Martin helped to settle the area, which became known as Etna.
Today, Bonnie told us that they use the barn mostly for storage these days. Along, with raising the usual crops – corn, soybeans, and wheat – she also has beef cattle and a few dairy cows. However, she leases most of her 205 acres to other farmers.
Since the wind chill hovered in single digits, Ron and I passed up the chance to inspect this old barn, deferring our visit to a warmer day. A plaque, inscripted “1816-2016,” commemorates this old barn, as does my painting, an honor that acknowledges the role that the barn and past generations of Martins played in building this little piece of Ohio.
The Negro Field
About two miles southwest of Etna – and close to this farm – an island in Tamarack Swamp served as a part of the Underground Railroad. And, according to family legend, which was passed down from one Martin generation to the next, escaped slaves, on their way to Canada, would work on one of the Martin fields, about 20 acres in size, receiving “food and keep” in exchange for their labor. Earlier generations called it “the Negro field,” which is documented in an old photo.
The tiny white barn, behind the farmhouse where Bonnie Martin lives, may have been built later – possibly around 1890, and may not have witnessed the slaves working in the fields. Some pieces of history will never be recovered, but the “Negro Field,” part of the essay on the Martin barns, will remember the kindess shown to these people as they marched north to freedom, far from their prisons in lands south.