Art · music · the barn

The barn was always a muse.

Long before Flatland Farms, American artists drew barns and farm families danced in them. Here is the lineage we are proud to follow.

Art

Barns in American art

All made before 1929. We describe each one in our own words and link to the museum that holds it, so you can see the real thing.

American Country Life: Summers Evening

Frances Flora Bond Palmer, published by Nathaniel Currier, 1855 · The Met

Cows come through the gate toward the barn behind the house while hands load hay onto a wagon.[1] See it at The Met →

American Farm Scenes, No. 2

Frances F. Palmer, published by Nathaniel Currier, 1853 · The Met

Cows and a farm hand head for a wooden barn; the farmhouse waits behind a picket fence.[2] See it at The Met →

Home to Thanksgiving

John Schutler after George Henry Durrie, Currier and Ives, 1867 · National Gallery of Art

A plank barn stands with one door open and hay piled high inside, cows and chickens in the yard.[3] See it at National Gallery of Art →

Winter Morning

Currier & Ives (firm active 1857–1907) · The Met

A snowy farmyard with a haystack, a cart and barns.[4] See it at The Met →

Husking the Corn in New England

Winslow Homer, Harper's Weekly, 1858 · Smithsonian American Art Museum

A husking party inside a farm barn: work and a party at the same time.[5] See it at Smithsonian American Art Museum →

Thornberry's Pasture, Brooklyn, Indiana (An Indiana Farm)

J. Ottis Adams of Indiana's Hoosier Group (Adams painted at Brooklyn, Indiana, in 1904) · Newfields, Indianapolis

An Indiana riverside and barn in glowing autumn light.[6] See it at Newfields, Indianapolis →

Music

From the barn dance to country radio

Barn raisings

When a barn burned, neighbors came from near and far, hauled the timber and raised a new one, then shared a supper. One Connecticut historical society calls it the only insurance of the old days.[7]

Barn dances

When the barn was up, the people who helped celebrated in it, with fiddle, banjo, accordion and guitar. Square dance calling is an American invention, said to date from around the War of 1812.[8]

The Grange

The Patrons of Husbandry, the Grange, was founded on December 4, 1867, to bring farm families together and speak up for them.[9] Grange halls held classes and social nights, and the Grange took women as members when few groups did.[10]

Radio barn dances

Chicago's WLS started its barn dance program in 1924; it became the National Barn Dance, the leading country music radio show of the 1930s and 1940s.[11] In 1925 George D. Hay, who had announced on WLS, started a Saturday-night barn dance on WSM Nashville that became the Grand Ole Opry, the cornerstone of country music.[12]

Indiana fiddlers today

The old tunes still play here. Fiddler Harold Klosterkemper, named a 2019 Indiana Heritage Fellow, learned tunes at local dances and kept Indiana's old-time music and dance alive.[13] The Indiana Fiddlers' Gathering meets every summer at the Tippecanoe Battlefield in Battle Ground.[14]

Our plate for the barn dancePlate XI · The Barn Dance
Song: “Thank the Good Lord for Bevies and Chevys”

Now it's our turn

Engraved plates and a song for every barn

Flatland Farms keeps the line going: 36 engraved plates of barns, fields and families, three country albums, and a song for every month of Barn of the Month. Every plate is drawn for one song.

See the plates See the songs

Sources

Where these facts come from

Facts checked October 2026 and written in our own words. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us through the Barn Letter form and we will fix it. The engraved plates are Flatland Farms artwork, not historic photographs.