The Evers family of Wolcottville in Noble County have been awarded the 2023 John Arnold Award for Rural Preservation from Indiana Landmarks and Indiana Farm Bureau.
The Evers family received their award during the Indiana Department of Agriculture’s Celebration of Agriculture at the Indiana State Fair on Thursday, Aug. 3 inside the historic Normandy Barn on the north side of the Indiana State Fairgrounds and Event Center.
The award honors the efforts of seven generations of the family to maintain and operate the historic farmstead.
Three brothers established the farm in 1854. Originally, the family harvested corn, oats, wheat, and soybeans, though today hay is the primary cash crop.
The farm owes its imposing brick house and barn to one of the founders’ son, Frank Myers. As a child, Frank gathered stones from the surrounding countryside, and 40 years later built the house and nearby barn using the stones as a foundation.
Frank, his wife Nellie, and their family became the first to occupy the three-story house, completed in 1923. It’s a showplace, with covered porches, oak, mahogany, birch, and birdseye maple hardwood. The house also features an impressive staircase, sterling silver chandeliers transported by railroad from Toledo, Ohio, and a third-floor ballroom that still includes a piano lifted in through an upper window before the house was completed.
Frank’s great-grandson, Frank Evers, and his wife Evelyn raised their nine children in the farmhouse, where the couple still lives, overseeing farm operations with their oldest son, Mark Evers, his wife Christie, and children Nathan, Emily, Andrew, and Olivia. Throughout the years, the family has preserved the original house as much as possible, maintaining the hardwood floors, plaster walls, leaded windows, and bathroom fixtures. Along with providing storage for family artifacts, the ballroom has served as a central gathering space, hosting square dances, graduations, weddings and other family celebrations.
Nearby, the equally impressive brick barn with fieldstone foundation dominates the landscape. The barn first housed milk cows as Plainview Dairy in the ‘20s and ‘30s, and Frank and Evelyn resumed dairy operations in 1975. They constructed a milking parlor and added a second concrete silo, turned hog farrowing pens into calf pens, and converted horse stalls into maternity pens. The surrounding landscape and the lettering on the 1950s Harvestore silo inspired the family to name the property Plainview Farms.
In 2002, the slim profit margins of dairy farming prompted the family to shift operations, first raising replacement dairy heifers for other farms and then expanding into a herd of Angus and Texas Longhorns.
For the past 17 years, Evelyn has worked to pass on respect for the land to her grandchildren by operating Plainview Playtime, a year-round family daycare and preschool at the farm. Along with learning traditional subjects, children receive hands-on lessons in farm chores and caring for animals, tending sheep borrowed from a neighbor during the summers.
“With a deep appreciation for their historic property and a commitment to preserving its heritage while operating it as a working farm, the Evers family exemplifies the tenets of the Arnold Award,” says Tommy Kleckner, director of Indiana Landmarks’ Western Regional Office and Arnold Award coordinator.
The annual award is named in memory of John Arnold (1955-1991), a Rush County farmer committed to preserving Indiana’s rural heritage.
Source: Indiana Landmarks.
