Maasdam Barns open for visitors

The Maasdam Barns gift shop is stocked and ready for the weekend.

The three restored barns and welcome center will open to the public at noon Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday.

Visitors will have the opportunity Saturday to watch plowing demonstrations by teams of horses and tour the property by wagon.

Though Saturday?s event is not the barns? grand opening, Maasdam Barns Preservation Committee Chairman Larry Nash said with the barns clean and displays up, ?we?re ready to have the public start using it.?

During the last seven years, a committee of 12 and numerous other volunteers have restored the historic stallions? barn, mares? barn and milking barn. The barns were re-roofed with wooden shingles, and original cupolas that had been removed were replicated.

Volunteers repaired windows, doors, siding and foundations and cleaned and painted the barns inside and out.

The preservation committee relocated a home from 107 W. Briggs Ave. to the barns site for use as a welcome center and museum. After refinishing the inside, museum displays designed by Jenny Bailey of Des Moines have been installed.

The grounds also have been significantly cleared, given some places were impassible when work first began.

Nash said a grand opening will be held next spring or summer, so the committee has more time to complete work on the grounds and rebuild a chicken house. Additionally, a group of Master Gardeners will landscape around the house.

Nash also said the preservation committee is looking to form Friends of the Barns, a group of volunteers interested in manning the welcome center and gift shop. At this point, Nash said it is unclear what the barns? hours will be, but they will not be open in the winter.

Anyone interested in volunteering at the welcome center may contact Dick Reed at 919-8262 or Janet Nash at 472-3235.