Iowa farmer saves crumbling barn as statewide preservation push grows

DUNCOMBE, Iowa —

Once fixtures of our state's rural landscape, barns are becoming endangered. Every year, about a thousand barns are torn down or destroyed in Iowa. There is a statewide effort to save them.

"They always say you need to preserve what you can't replace and we are never going to replace the barns," says Deann Haden, county representative of the Iowa Barn Foundation. "We got to do something."

The Iowa Barn Foundation's mission is to preserve agricultural buildings. Since the organization's inception in the late '90s, it's helped restore 400 barns. However, the group is lacking volunteers in half of the state's counties to help identify and advocate for the barns in need of saving there. Haden and the foundation say that is a real challenge for the organization and a barrier