The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
BARN QUILT TRAIL TURNS HEADS TOWARD HISTORY
New Milford hopes to draw visitors with new art project
NEW MILFORD — Sometimes, when Saun Ellis peeks out her window, she can see cars pulling up next to the driveway of the farm she owns with her husband, Francisco Drohojowski, on Upland Road. The curious visitors get out of the car and crane their necks to look up at the large quilt square attached to the carriage house barn.
Ellis’ barn is now one of 19 throughout New Milford that boast these colorful, imaginative, historical quilt squares, making up the state’s first Barn Quilt Trail. The patterns, chosen by the owners with input from local artists, are handpainted on large 8 foot by 8 foot squares and put on display at some of the most beautiful and historic barns in the town.
“I have never worked on a project in town that has brought so much joy to residents,” said Julie Bailey, a member of the New Milford Barn Quilt Trail committee. “So that really delights all of us.”
The project began in 2013 after then-Mayor Patricia Murphy, an avid quilter, received a state economic development grant for the project. In 2017, the town installed the first phase of quilt blocks, and the project was completed this past winter after 11 more barns,
including Ellis’, were added.
Bill Devlin, another committee member, has researched and written about each barn, explaining their historical significance and a bit about the pattern selection, which is displayed on the trail’s webpage. Devlin’s extensive research has helped unearth some of New Milford’s agricultural roots, including its heavy involvement in Connecticut’s dairy markets and the early days of the broadleaf tobacco trade.
Each barn’s quilt square carries some of the family or farm’s history, has its own name, and is made in the traditional New England or modern original style.
A small team of artists, led by Jayson Roberts, co-founder and studio director of the Village Center for the Arts, Inc. painted the majority of the quilt squares, and took care to make them realistic. The result — mimicking the puffed edges of a real quilt — meant investing more than 25 hours of work into each one.
For Susan Bailey, who is also on the trail committee but no relation to Julie, the “Andy Warhol-ish” cows that adorn the family’s barn represent some of the first brown Swiss cows imported into the US by her greatgrandfather.
For Ellis and her husband, the colorful quilt block encapsulates their appreciation for the culturally universal tree of life symbol, Drohojowski’s Mexican heritage, and an iconic maple tree on their property.
Ellis and her husband were so eager to put their own quilt pattern up that they submitted their own design, created by Ronnie Maddalena, and were accepted.
“We combined the elements of my husband’s childhood in Mexico and the love of that symbol, the tree of life, which is a universal symbol, and
the love of the maple tree,” Ellis said.
“We’re thrilled to be a part of that and we’re thrilled to acknowledge the heritage of this farm.”
New visitors to old farms
Julie Bailey said they don’t yet have a good way to monitor trail usage or quantify visitors. But barn owners say they frequently see people stopping by. The outdoor activity seemed to be a good pandemic-friendly one.
“I had absolutely no idea how viral this thing would go,” Julie Bailey said. “I mean, this really gives an identity to New Milford and really raises the profile of our surviving family farms and really lets people know the extent to which this town has been defined by its agricultural history.”
Since one requirement is that the barn be publicly accessible, owners have seen bikers, walkers and vehicles come down their roads, checking out the trail.
The committee has created a QR code as a way to track engagement but hasn’t always been able to get accurate numbers since some don’t click on the link, Julie Bailey said.
Many use the code to access more information about the barns.
Thanks to Devlin’s careful research of all of the barns and his discussions with their owners, the local stories will be preserved.
“I think other people will add to it and people will use it as a jumpingoff point for other research,” said Devlin of his contributions to writing some of New Milford’s history. “This fills, to me, a need.”
His favorite part of the process was the funny details he would find: old tobacco cultivation machinery, the old age of some foundations, the timbers that held up a roof.
“There’s just all these little surprises in these barns,” he said.
Even without exact numbers, the trail’s reputation and popularity has spread, according to Julie Bailey. She said they’ve received calls from neighboring counties and towns about starting their own trails. Residents and officials in Bridgewater, Washington, and Brookfield have all expressed interest, so Julie Bailey thinks the trend may very well spread.
It’s also been a pleasant opportunity for barn owners to celebrate the living history of the land and, in some cases, their ancestors.
“It’s been very fun and positive experience. We’ve had a lot of good feedback from the town, as far as town officials,” said Susan Bailey. “During COVID, it was a nice outside thing for people to drive around and see.”
But more than anything, Julie Bailey said the Barn Quilt Trail is helping re-brand the New Milford of today.
“New Milford, for many, many years was known as really the site of Route 7 big-box stores and as a rapidly proliferating bedroom community,” she said. “And what we have done with this is really bring back, to the fore, what really sustained it through its history.”