Book signing at Farm Museum

HARDIN COUNTY – (Note: author Karlene Kingery will be doing book signings Saturday at the Hardin County Farm Museum, but she will not be giving a lecture on the subject as was incorrectly stated in a story in the May 22 issue).

HARDIN COUNTY – It’s been a nearly 40 year long labor of love – of barns – for a St. Anthony native and life long educator.

Now the results are in and you can see them when Karlene Kingery comes to the Hardin County Farm Museum on Satuday June 2 for a book signing session during the museum’s regular pancake breakfast from 7 to 9:30 a.m.

Kingery grew up on a farm near St. Anthony, and graduated from State Center High School. She went on to study and graduate from Marycrest College in Davenport, Iowa, and the University of Wyoming.

Because of Karlene’s love of country life she obtained an $800 grant in 1979 to study Iowa barns. 

She presented over 300 programs throughout the state of Iowa until she and her husband moved to Omaha in 1985. She was then a high school and community college science and math teacher and homebound tutor until retiring in 2012. For the next six years Karlene continued the research she had started in 1979, traveling to all 99 Iowa counties to research and add new barns as well as check the status of all the ones she had studied in the early 1980s. She took photos, wrote the text, and did layout. Books will be for sale at the museum.

In late 2017 Karlene published Iowa Barns, Yesterday and Today. This 294-page book includes 800 photos and interesting stories of these Iowa barns, corncribs, and silos.