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Big white barn center of family events, community craft fair
WAUNETA, Neb. — Maggie McCoy’s 14 grandkids love her big, white barn. They have slumber parties, back-to-school parties and birthday parties here. They watch movies projected onto the broad side of the barn. Maggie’s grandson and his fiance recited their wedding vows inside the barn.
Maggie loves that her family creates so many memories inside the barn on the acreage that she bought in 2010. “I remember my grandparents’ barn,” she said recently. “I want my grandkids to remember my barn.”
Other memories of the barn — ones Maggie shares primarily with her daughter, Renee Wheeler, and then with hundreds of other people — are of the “White Barn Treasures” craft fair and artisan event that Maggie and Renee have sponsored at the farmstead for several years.
Maggie’s and Renee’s fifth “barn event” will be Saturday, Oct. 13, from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. MT, at the barn northeast of Wauneta. (A travel hint: Leave McCook at 9 a.m., get to Wauneta just before 9 a.m.) There’s no admission charge.
The craft fair has its roots with open houses selling Maggie’s and her daughters’ sewing and baked goods at Maggie’s and Renee’s homes. But then they outgrew those locations, and the north wall of the barn blew out.
“It was either fix the barn or tear it down,” Maggie remembers. They fixed the barn. They repaired the north wall, cemented the floor, removed the horse stalls and some of the too-many doors, built new stairs to the hay loft and installed a new floor up there — all with the idea of moving the craft shows into the barn.
A small restroom has been created with corrugated tin walls, a new vintage-look pressed tin ceiling and a dark blue granite-ware roasting pan sink. They fashioned the countertop from sanded-and-sealed horse corral fence boards that show evidence of horses “cribbing” (chewing) on it.
They’ve strung Edison light bulbs from the open rafters. Maggie and Renee say they just grin when the vendors ask if they object to them pounding in a nail. “Are you kidding?!” Maggie chuckles, knowing it will only add to the charm of the barn.
“The craft show just kept growing,” Maggie said, and they had to “boot” Renee’s husband Marty’s pulled pork kitchen from the south room of the barn to make room for more vendors. They cleaned out the east half of the nearby shop building, also to make room for more vendors.
Marty refashioned a silo into his kitchen, and from there, he serves his “Wheeler Ranch Pulled Pork Sandwiches and Nachos.”
Maggie’s younger grandkids will sell their specialty hand-crafted “breakfast burritos.” Renee’s kids are picking pears to sell. Other vendors are bringing pumpkins and gourds and Indian corn.
“The inside of the barn is so pretty when it’s filled with people and craft items,” Maggie said.
The show now features about 25 local artisans and their wares, crafts, and vintage and repurposed treasures.
Maggie and Renee keep their vendors “local,” ranging from Beaver City to Ogallala. “That’s part of the charm of it. They’re all local. We know everyone,” Renee said. “Many of these vendors come here only.”
Shoppers, however, come from all over. “We have to keep the doors shut tight until 9 o’clock,” Maggie says, with a grin. “There’s really quite a rush when we open the doors.”
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Maggie’s barn isn’t hard to find. It’s big, just more than 100 years old, and it’s always been white.
Go north through Wauneta on North Arapahoe (the west fork of the two streets that converge at the Wauneta Crossroads convenience store on Highway 6); and across the Frenchman Creek bridge onto the county road (which is Old Highway 6). Just up the hill to the north is Avenue 347, turn to the right here (careful, it’s washboardy). Go up the hill, around the corner, and north to Road 733. Turn to the right here, and there you are. The focal point of the first farmstead on the left is Maggie’s white barn.