History of Star Patch Farm

Star Patch Farm is our 50 acre family farm located in north central Indiana.  Our parents purchased this property in the late 1960's and raised horses, hogs, cattle, rabbits and chickens, along with a large garden.  As the children grew and moved away, so did the livestock, and eventually the farm ground was rented out to a neighboring farmer.  Upon inheriting the farm in 2012, the tillable land was put into conservation reserve, and restoration was begun on the house and farm buildings.  At the same time, it was decided to consolidate our other enterprises, Spears Leather Works and Spears Heirloom Quilting, with Star Patch Farm.  So began Star Patch Farm Quilt & Leather Works.

The farmstead house was built in 1912 with the barn erected the following year from lumber from the woods on the property.  When our family bought this property in 1968, the same couple had owned it since 1910.  Their original land holdings had encompassed 160 acres, and upon the death of the wife,  108 acres of bare ground was sold to a neighboring farmer. and 52 acres with house, barn and outbuildings became ours.  In the early 1970's, the county relieved us of two acres by eminent domain to straighten a particularly dangerous section of road after the death of four teenagers.

We remodeled the barn from a dairy to a horse barn with stalls to accommodate seven horses.  Fields were seeded to clover, alfalfa and brome grass, and we routinely baled 2,000 to 3,000 bales of hay each year.  An old tractor shed was torn down, and a hog barn remodeled into a welding and machinery shop.  The original farm buildings also included two large chicken houses, a brooder house and various small sheds.  When we no longer raised chickens, one of the large chicken houses was converted to a workshop for the boys, and the other was used to raise hogs.  The brooder house became a nursery/quarantine for runt piglets, and later a rabbitry.  A greenhouse was built  between the two large chicken houses and surrounded by an orchard.  It is still in use today, though the orchard is mostly gone.

Wooden fences were put in to create paddock areas for the horses, with the fence boards being cut from timber from the woods.  Wire fencing was installed around the outer perimeter of the farm, with barbed wire fencing creating separation between the hayfields and the horse pastures.  After the last of the children moved away, the horses were sold and hayfields plowed under.  The paddock fences were slowly removed over the years rather than being maintained, and the perimeter fence still exists only sporadically.  The barn has become a dusty repository for stray equipment and garden hoses, though the name plates of the horses still hang on their stall doors.  But, the welding shop has become the new home for a magnificent old John Deere 3020 tractor- a first step in reclaiming the farm.