The Geauga County Barn Quilt Trail, which began in 2015, has just welcomed a sixth member.On Feb. 19, the Geauga Park District added a 4-foot-by-4-foot,…
The Geauga County Barn Quilt Trail, which began in 2015, has just welcomed a sixth member.
On Feb. 19, the Geauga Park District added a 4-foot-by-4-foot, Monarch-and-milkweed-themed barn quilt square at its Swine Creek Reservation on a barn built to house horses for wagon rides, sleigh rides and sap gathering from the early 1980s through the late 1990s.
The original naturalist, Duane Feris, conceived the park’s Wagon Loop Trail for the expressed purpose of getting people out in nature via horse-drawn wagon rides. The barn is located on Hayes Road just north of the entrance to the park at 15750 Hayes Road, Middlefield Township.
“Those were good times,” said Geauga Park District Executive Director John Oros, who as a maintenance tech, rotated running wagon ride shifts in the mid-1990s with Kelly Yeater and Tom Mansfield. “The local community or those who had relatives in from out of town, they’d just show up after church to go on ride. The nostalgia — people really appreciated it.
“And you’d make special stops. The sapsucker tree that had been riddled by the woodpeckers, the trilliums in the springtime, you’d stop and grab some hickory nuts or tell people about the white oak trees.”
Some days, a half dozen people would come out. Other days, rides would be full, especially when naturalists hosted special interpretations, Oros said.
“When I started in 1989, the barn was already there with Charlie and Vicki, and I had to work every weekend to do wagon rides from 1 (p.m.) to 6 p.m.,” said Naturalist Judy Bradt-Barnhart. “Many Amish would picnic in the shelters back then who rode the wagon by gender — women and children, then men separately.”
According to the park district, the park’s first horses were Clydesdales Vicki (who is buried in the pasture there) and Charlie. The park then purchased Belgians Rick and Jim, and the three male horses alternated working together. Charlie eventually retired, and when the park district got out of the business of owning horses, Rick and Jim were sold to the Amish down the road, though were still rented for a time to collect sap in the sugarbush — a more quiet, nostalgic method that had less impact to the ground than a tractor.
The most prominent interpretive volunteers on these rides were Iola Skinner, Audrey Hudak and Ann Ungard, Oros said.
A concrete water trough still on site — “one of the fanciest water troughs at that time” — was built by Tim Kallay, he said.
After more than a decade without them, in 2015, the Geauga Park District was thrilled to bring horses back to the sugarbush for Sap’s-a-Risin’! in March and to the Wagon Loop Trail for Fall Fest in October. It plans to contract these services for years to come.
Geauga Park District communications manager Sandy Ward, volunteer coordinator and special events assistant Holly Sauder, special events coordinator Teresa Runion and graphic designer Vicky Liptak helps assist in the creation of the barn quilt, as did Brett Bellas, grounds and facilities manager, and Michele Pennell, director of business and visitor services. Volunteer Don Winton, of Chardon, built the structure.
The Monarch-and-milkweed theme was conceived on a March afternoon at Cotton-picker’s Quilt Shop in Chardon, where Ward, Runion, shop owner Beth Safic and quilter Kathryn Gostola discussed how to weave the park district’s mission into the design.
For the past 20 years, large stands of milkweed that once grew between crops and around field edges throughout the Midwest have been killed due to the genetic modification of crops to resist Roundup, causing a shortage of this sole host plant for the Monarch butterfly and, therefore, a sharp decline in its reproductive success.
The park district has hosted a Monarch display, with live tagging and releasing, at The Great Geauga County Fair for decades. In 2015, it distributed at least 3,000 milkweed seed packets at the county fair as well as 959 pots, each holding five to seven milkweed seedlings via free public giveaways.
That adds up to nearly 7,000 milkweed plants rooted regionally in a single year, according to the park district.
The hope is that continued efforts to raise awareness of this situation positively affect the population of the iconic butterfly.
Ward, Sauder, Runion, Liptak and Winton signed the back of the quilt for posterity while maintenance techs Hailey Burns and Joshua Inks hung it.
For those interested in learning more about the barn quilt trail or to register to join it, visit www.GeaugaBarnQuiltTrail.com.
