The Original Daniel E. Krause Farm
Circa 1903 - 1920

~ Click On Photos to Enlarge ~
 

Marlene Bowan is the Community Nutrition Coordinator & Civic Center Coordinator for the Shawano Senior Center.  Last year Marlene had seen pictures of the stone barn on the Oconto County genealogy website and thought it looked like an interesting place to visit.  This year one of the senior's, Florence Sikorski from Krakow, showed a Pulaski News article to Marlene that was written about the stone barn.  With the help of Florence and the Shawano County Aging and Disabilities Resource Center (ADRC), they organized a "Mystery Trip" for the senior's to tour the stone barn. 

Marlene and the bus driver, Keith Raasch, where the only ones on the bus that knew where they were going.  The only hint the senior's got was a photo of an leaning old barn with a caption that read, "Maybe we could use the rocks."

When the senior's arrived at the town hall, Chris Jaworski was waiting for them with his restored tractor and a neighbor's hay wagon.  Chris is a member of the Stone Barn Renovation Committee, and also the President of the Pulaski Area Historical Society.
 

As the hay wagon traveled east down Cty Rd S, they went past Dornhaus's pumpkin patch. 

Still, the senior's had no idea where they were going. 

One woman speculated that they were going to the N.E.W. Zoo :-)

Surprise! 

The mystery was finally over when the hay wagon turned down the driveway to the stone barn.

Many of the senior women recognized the barn, as they had grown up in neighboring communities. 

Chris's first stop was just outside the east side of the barn where he gave a brief presentation about the early days of Chase and how the stone barn came to be.

Chris then drove the wagon around the barn and into the west end of the barn where he continued to give details about its history.  He described the different types of stones (some billions of years old) and explained how massive glaciers tumbled them here all the way from the Canadian Shield over the past 70,000 years when three known ice ages passed through Wisconsin. 
 

When Chris was explaining about the stones, Marlene shouted out to the senior's, "How many of you picked stones when you were a kid?" Every woman's arm went up as sighs of remembered agony were groaned throughout the wagon.

Chris also explained how a small tornado took off a corner of the tin roof around 1994.  It was repaired in 1995 by Orvil Krueger, The Building Doctor, and his crew when they renovated the stone barn.

 Orvil had to pull the entire north wall in 16" because it was leaning outward.  His crew also had to fix small and large cracks in the stone walls.  Had this not been done, the stone barn was estimated to have fallen down within a few years.
 

Thank You to everyone from the Shawano Senior Center for allowing us the opportunity to show you this beautiful stone barn. 

We hope you enjoyed
the tour :-)

"Oh wow...this is awesome!"

Responses after the tour: 

"That was quite something!"

"I never knew it was so hard to build with stones."

"Oh, this is going to be a fantastic place!"

""How come I never knew this was here?"