“It’s Livelihood”

The barn of the Miesner brothers Terry, Mike and Rick, April 26, 2018, in Perry County.

Kassi Jackson ~ Southeast Missourian

Perry County Barn Quilt Trail showcases local agricultural history

Family farm heritage runs deep in Perry County, Missouri.

The county is home to a multitude of working family farms, including many Missouri Century Farms.

To preserve and share this heritage, Perry County Heritage Tourism is creating a Perry County Barn Quilt Trail.

Janet Koenig, the artist of many of the barn quilts that can be viewed along Perry County’s Barn Quilt Trail, heard about barn quilts from her friend Kathy Stueve a little over three years ago. Stueve discovered the idea while traveling on vacation through Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota. Stueve commissioned an artist from St. Louis to make one the quilts for her and her husband Clifford’s barn. When Koenig saw it, she wanted to make one of her own.

So Koenig did just that, learning how to make the quilts from detailed instructions she found on Pinterest.

“They’re majestic, they’re beautiful,” Koenig says of the old barns in Perry County and why she is drawn to making barn quilts for them. “Many of the barns have deteriorated and are over 100 years old — the farmers have kept them up and re-sided or repainted them. Not only do the barn quilts showcase the barns, it also shows the women’s role in our heritage with quilt making.”

Koenig’s barn quilts come in three sizes: 4 feet by 4 feet, 6 feet by 6 feet and 8 feet by 8 feet. She makes the quilts out of the smooth plywood signmakers use. She uses three coats of primer and three coats of exterior latex paint for each color, with some colors requiring an additional three coats. Then she waterproofs them by applying a sealant to the edges. The whole process can take anywhere from five days to three weeks to complete.

After her daughter posted a photo on Facebook of the quilts Koenig made for herself and her brother-in-law, other farmers in the area began contacting her to make quilts for their barns, too.

Koenig soon involved Perry County Heritage Tourism to begin putting a map of the trail together, along with a brief history of each barn that hosts a quilt. The map is still in the works, with plans to become available to the public after it is completed.

In the meantime, visitors can take a self-guided driving tour of more than 30 unique barn quilts throughout the East End of Perry County, northern Cape Girardeau County and southern and northern Perry County.

Missouri Star

The barn of Kathy and Clifford Stueve in Brazeau.

Kassi Jackson ~ Southeast Missourian

Clifford and Kathy Stueve’s barn near Brazeau, Missouri, is the backdrop to one of the quilts on the trail. Their quilt is designed from the Missouri Star pattern, which Kathy chose because they live in Missouri, as well as to honor Clifford’s 42 years spent working for MoDOT. The red, white and blue colors also pay homage to her husband’s military service in Vietnam.

The white-sided barn the Missouri Star quilt is displayed upon was built by Clifford’s father, uncles and a construction crew in 1950, using timber harvested off of the farm. After living on the farm for a couple of years, Clifford and Kathy bought the farm from Clifford’s father in 1973 and have lived there since.

“There’s a lot of unique barns out there,” Kathy says. “At one point we thought we were going to tear ours down because they’re really not useful with the big equipment nowadays; they are really just obsolete.”

Instead, Kathy realized she didn’t want to tear the barn down, and so about 15 years ago, they decided to re-side the barn instead.

The Stueves own two other farms, one that they rent out, as well as Clifford’s home place, just down the road from where they live. This farm is a registered Missouri Century Farm that has been in the Stueve family since 1868; Clifford’s father and 16 brothers and sisters were raised on the farm. While Clifford’s siblings migrated west harvesting wheat in Montana and along the coast of California — eventually buying a dairy there — Clifford’s father came back to run their farm in Missouri.

The value of living on the same land that has been in his family for generations is, to Clifford, priceless.

“It’s not for sale, put it that way,” he says, before getting on his Kubota to check his beef cattle. “It’s not for sale. It’s that simple. That’s just the way it is.”

International Harvester

Kathy and Paul Renner pose for a portrait in front of their barn quilt mounted on a grainery that is over 100 years old on their land in Uniontown.

Kassi Jackson ~ kjackson@semissourian.com

A tractor. A truck. A red flannel shirt worn while sharpening the blades on his lawn mower.

Paul Renner has more than one International Harvester product, and he and his wife Kathy’s barn quilt displays this pride just outside of Uniontown, Missouri. Their quilt bears the International emblem to commemorate the more than 37 years Paul worked as a diesel mechanic at International Harvester Wiethop Truck Sales in Cape Girardeau.

The quilt is displayed on the stone-foundationed grainery that is over 100 years old and sits on the property where Kathy’s mother grew up. The grainery was used to grind and store feed made from oats and wheat. The brick house that sits a few yards away on the property was built in 1897, by Kathy’s grandparents. The bricks were made right on the property, by Kathy’s great-grandfather Christian Kasten, who owned a brickyard there. In the early 1900s after becoming full-owner of the business, Kasten moved it to Jackson, and it is still Kasten Masonry today.

On the same gravel road, a stone’s throw away from the property where Kathy’s mother grew up, a second home was built in 1897 that is now home to Kathy’s and her lifelong friend Ruthie Rellergert’s antique shop, 531 Wash House.

“They were built to last,” Kathy says of the homes. “They’re three bricks thick.”

Paul and Kathy moved to the property in 1996, after living in Cape Girardeau and Gordonville. The buildings hold many fond memories for Kathy.

“I remember visiting here when I was little and I’d get to walk up to Mike’s Place,” Kathy says, referring to a former tavern in Uniontown. “They had ice cream where they scooped it out in a cone, for a nickel a cone.”

Massey Ferguson

Paul and Kathy’s backyard sidles up next to John and Donna Telle’s farm in Uniontown. The Telles are fifth generation dairy farmers, and their milking barn built in 1914 displays a barn quilt with the Telles’ tractor brand of choice: a vintage Massey Ferguson emblem.

The Farm roots run deep in John’s family: his great-great grandfather founded the dairy farm. John took over the farming operations in 1992, and the dairy farm became Grade A in 1993. In 1997, John bought the ground.

The Telles milk their cattle twice a day, and the milk is picked up every other day. Usually the milk goes to Chester Dairy, where it is bottled in glass bottles and sold at grocery stores such as Farm Fresh in Perryville, Missouri. Sometimes the milk also goes to a plant in O’Fallon, Illinois, or to a Starbucks’ frappuccino plant in Cabool, Missouri.

“It’s tough right now,” John says. “Milking cows is kind of tough with the economy and everything. All the commodities are down right now … But it’s like one of those deals you’ve got to stick with it because it’s forever up and down. In order to get the good times, you’ve got to go through the bad times.”

Cultivating family land that has been a part of one’s lineage for so long makes both the good and the bad times worth it.

“It’s a livelihood,” John says. “You have to like to do what you do. Some people like to go out, work eight hours a day and then go out and have fun or be free, but my freedom is going out and doing this all day long. That’s why I do it.”