20/07/2025
Story of the Hebron Barn Adorned by Barn Quilts
(And You Thought Quilts Couldn’t Tell Stories!)
My Grandpa and Grandma (Howard and Frances Hebron) bought a barn which was a Sears & Roebuck barn. It was delivered by train to the depot in Farina. My Grandpa then brought it home by horse and wagon which took several trips. He then hired a man from the Edgewood/Mason area to assemble it.
While growing up just down the road from Grandma and Grandpa, I spent a lot of time at their house. As my cousins and I grew up, my cousins started telling my grandma what they wanted when she died. While talking to my grandma one day I told her that it wasn’t right for my cousins to be asking for things. Grandma asked, “What would you like?” I said what I wanted I couldn’t have, which was the home place. It was known that Uncle Tom would get the 80 acres with the home stead, and my dad would get the other 80 acres. My grandma said, “Well, you never know.”
After my grandparents passed away, the will stated, just as we all knew it would, that Uncle Tom would receive the home stead 80 and dad would get his 80 acres. Uncle Tom was talking to my dad and said, “Why don’t we swap 80’s?” He further stated that the home stead really didn’t mean that much to his kids, but it does mean a lot to Little Larry (me), so they did. My mom and dad later allowed me to purchase five acres from them which was the homestead.
The barn was always white, and since I was young, I always wanted the barn to be red. I was telling my wife about this, and she said, “So let’s do it.” I was telling this to my dad and Uncle Tom one day and they said, “You can’t paint it red!” I asked why. I knew there must be a reason. They both replied, “Well, because it’s always been white.” Two weeks after the pressure washing and patching, the barn was painted red with white trim. When my dad and Uncle Tom saw it, they both said, “Well that looks pretty nice red.”
My wife and I were talking about how nice it would be to have a barn quilt. One Christmas our kids surprised us with a 4-foot X 4-foot barn quilt. We hung it on the west side of the barn facing the house so we could always see it. We loved the look of it so much we decided we would like another one on the east side of the barn. We looked at hundreds of pictures of barn quilts, and after hours and days of looking we finally decided on the one we liked, but we wanted it to be 8-foot X 8-foot. The next thing was to find someone that could draw the lines. We were able to talk to the person that had drawn the lines for the quilt that our kids had given us. Once the lines were drawn, we spent about two weeks taping and painting -- and then taping and painting some more. We were finally able to complete it. Then the task of hanging it was completed after some nervous watching by my wife.
We then had a wide open space on the barn that we felt needed something too. We decided to commemorate our wedding anniversary and painted the heart with our names and wedding date.
So, if you are ever on the Farina/Iola road coming west to Farina, just look for the big red barn with the beautiful barn quilts complete with our heart. – Larry & Ruth Hebron
