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ThIS 146-by-140-foot, two-story gable-roofed bank barn was built in 1876 to house a horse stud operation that kept imported stallions from Europe.

A dominant feature of the family farm happens to be a huge red barn that catches everyone’s attention driving by.

The farm was settled in 1854 by Konrad Moeckly after his family emigrated from Switzerland. They were enroute to the West for the gold rush but instead stopped in Iowa. The 146-by-140-foot, two-story gable-roofed bank barn was built in 1876 to house a horse stud operation that kept imported stallions from Europe.

The farmstead is part of the Moeckly Family Farm, L.L.C., with three generations actively involved in the farming operation. The barn also offers shelter to a herd of White Park cattle, a rare beef breed in the U.S. that originated in Great Britain.

Anna and Tyler Moeckly’s three sons — Jonathan, 21, Jacob, 19, and Nicholas, 17 — all plan to farm with the family as the eighth generation, Anna Moeckly said. Jonathan just wrapped up his agribusiness degree at Des Moines Area Community College and his younger brothers plan to follow suit.

“This barn is massive by today’s standards, so I can’t imagine what people thought back then,” she said.

However, with the farm right next to ever-expanding Polk City, the family is regularly approached about selling the farm to developers.

“We’ve sold a little bit, but we always try to find more farm ground so we can continue farming and support the boys as they join the operation,” Anna Moeckly said. “We’re nestled between two rapidly growing cities — Ankeny and Polk City — which presents unique challenges for us. We’re hanging on as long as we can. It’s hard to think — are we the generation that has to make the decision of do we pick up and move?”

One option the family has been toying around with is using the giant red barn as an event venue. It’s currently empty and occasionally houses a few items in it from time to time.

“We do have a herd of cattle, but we don’t keep livestock in there. But they do use the barn as a windblock,” Anna Moeckly said. “Family members in the past used the barn for their stud service. The horses back then were draft horses used for farming. We’ve been approached about hosting a fundraiser there and other events.”

The family was approached a few years ago about having a Field of Dreams scenario created there, so now there’s a big ballfield in the middle of the farm. People who participated in the Iowa Barn Foundation’s tour would testify that the barn caught their attention.

“We had well over 1,000 people go through it. There were people who even came from out of state,” Moeckly said. “It was really neat to hear some of the stories that people shared. You could see them take a step back in time and remember things from their past. It was really great.”

The Moecklys describe the big red barn as a “labor of love.”

“In the 1980s, Tyler’s grandparents, John and Marilyn, emphasized that we preserve the barn. In the ’80s, there were limited funds with the bad farm crisis. But the cedar shakers for the roof were in desperate need of being replaced. We ended up putting on a tin roof, but it would be neat to get a quote and see what it would cost to put cedar shakers on there,” Anna Moeckly said. “Our kids spent all summer cleaning out the barn that had 100 years of collections of all kinds of stuff — dusty stuff. We know at some point in the future the original siding will need to be replaced. When we painted it, she drank up a lot of paint.”