Windmill installed at Fairfield’s Maasdam Barns

FAIRFIELD — Maasdam Barns in Fairfield has a neat new feature that was completed earlier this week: a working antique windmill.

Maasdam Barns board member Leon Connelly said the project to relocate a windmill on the property’s well has been six years in the making. Connelly finished the final piece on Tuesday and was able to pump water from the 50-foot well that likely hasn’t been used for several decades.

The Maasdam Barns are a historic set of barns on the south side of Fairfield that bear the name of the family that made them famous in the early 20th century for their champion purebred horses. During the past 15 years, volunteers have restored the farmstead into a popular tourist destination complete with a visitors center.

The 25-foot windmill Connelly installed is a combination of parts from two windmills on different farms in the county. The top portion of the windmill, including the fan, motor and tail, came from the farm of Fred “Buss” and Frances Turner just south of Libertyville. The tower came from the farm of Charlie Holmes, on property that is now part of Jefferson County Park.

Connelly said he’s always wanted to have a working windmill at the barns to show the public how farmers got water for their family and their livestock years ago. He thought it would be yet another cool thing to see at the barns to complement its other displays of agricultural history.

One day while helping his brother Curt (who runs Connelly Recycling) on a trash route near Libertyville, Leon spotted the windmill at the Turner farm. He learned that their windmill was a Chicago-built Aermotor brand, considered the “Cadillac of windmills” because of its self-lubricating design, where gears would spin in a bath of oil, splashing it on the motor’s moving parts. It was manufactured between 1916 and 1933, which meant it would be a nice antique to have at the barns.

“The advertisement for it at the time was, ‘If you don’t have water, you don’t have life,’ and that was very true,” Connelly said.

Connelly reached out to Crystal Reneker, daughter of Fred and Frances and the one managing their estate. She had no problem giving the windmill to Connelly. In fact, Connelly said the windmill made loud squeaking noises, so everyone in the neighborhood was glad to see it find a home where it would be fixed up.

Rod Nelson of Live Wire Electric helped take the windmill apart and transport it. At the other farmstead, Brown Tree Service used its crane to move the tower at the Holmes’ farm onto a trailer.

The barns’ newly installed windmill is not its original height of 35 feet but was made 10 feet shorter to accommodate the tree that’s grown near the well. Connelly said having a shorter windmill is actually preferable for how the board is using it as an educational device since it means the fan and tail are closer to the ground and easier to see.

The windmill is set up to allow water to flow into a nearby stock tank. Farmers would have given this water to their livestock. Connelly said the stock tank at Maasdam Barns once fed into another stock tank, which has since been demolished.

The windmill can be turned on and off, and Connelly said it will remain off except during a demonstration. He said that, at the time these windmills were used, they might be left on until a float in the tank reached a certain level and forced the mill to shut off.

Connelly and fellow board member Tony Webb showed the windmill’s motor to a man in Pella who gave them duplicate parts to construct a separate motor the board could use for educational purposes. Connelly said he’s looking forward to showing off the windmill during a couple of upcoming events at the barns: a program on horses Aug. 14 and the annual Barnyard Bash Aug. 27, featuring food, live music horse-drawn wagon rides and more.