Amana Colonies – a corn crib or a visitors center? Both!

Heading north to a dare I say the word, Swap Meet to please my rusty iron loving husband, we stopped for lunch in the beautiful Amana Colonies.  While he shopped for antiques, I strolled the quiet beautiful streets and stopped at the Amana Colonies Visitor’s Center (http://amanacolonies.com.)   Two years ago the first weekend in December we came to Amana for the Christmas festivities and the chance to tour some open houses.  That weekend was magical. We stayed at the lovely Zuber hotel, and toured and shopped.  The area was even graced with a light snow and the weekend was like a Dicken’s Christmas story.

Anyway!  I diverge.  I stopped by the visitors center to see if that event was going on this year and was surprised by the lovely restored corn crib.  is a beautiully restored corn crib

The restoration of the corn crib began in 2004.  Using a grant that the Amana Colonies Historical Sites Foundation was awarded in 2003, the corn crib that was built in 1945 began to see new life.

Originally the corn crib was used as a place to store grain from fields surrounding the colonies. When the corn crib was built in 1945, Amana Farms operated as seven separate farms. Check out my upcoming column Wrenching Tales in Farm World (www.farmworldonline.com.)    for more details about the lovely restored corn crib!

For those that want to know, the Amana colonies were,were comprised of  a group of settlements of German Pietists  that called themselves the Ebenezer Society or the Community of True Inspiration.  Moving to America to avoid persecution they settled in east-central Iowa (near present-day Iowa City) in 1855 and lived a communal life until the mid 1930s.

We love this historical place that is full of lovely shops, history and most of all, amazing family style food!