As can be seen by the sign, this barn is home to Dawn's design studio. When finished, it will house several other ventures.

Old Geneseo Farm
is mini-industrial park
These days, you see farmers diversifying into sideline ventures to add income, in the hope of making up for sagging ag revenues.

David and Dawn Tubbs did just the opposite. They bought a small farm with the intention of turning it into a string of sideline businesses—virtually without the farming.

The Farmers Mutual Electric Co. members knew that there was a farm for sale between Geneseo and Atkinson, and they decided to have a look. It turned out that the first thing they saw as they drove in was the barn.

"It had been built in 1951 as a dairy barn," Dave says, "and it was really a beauty. The barn sold us, no question about it. We both saw all kinds of possibilities, almost instantly. The farm had been on the market for just three days, and we snapped it up as quickly as we could." Then the fun started. "Sometime after it was built," Dawn says, "it was converted to a hog barn, and it was wall-to-wall fences."

Dave adds, "We sandblasted the entire inside of the barn before we started doing anything else, and I had to jackhammer out the entire floor. We put in seven truckloads of sand. Then we put six inches of insulation in the walls, and trenched it two feet into the ground around the perimeter of the building."

Obviously, they had plans for the structure, and they knew that a major part of what they wanted to do involved an art gallery and studio. With that in mind, they realized that they'd need a lot of light. They installed seven picture windows down one side of the building to let in as much light as possible.

"We knew the conversion would be a big job," Dawn says, "and we knew that it wouldn't be cheap, either. We'd planned from the start to do one little job at a time, and we'd also planned to use salvaged materials whenever we could. The entire suspended ceiling is made of salvaged materials, in fact. And so are lots of other things."

Their plans called for several different uses for the building. Dawn's studio and gallery were included, for sure, and so was a photo darkroom. Her art operation is called "Destiny Design Studio and Gallery."

She displays some of her work there, and has work on display at the Art Independent Gallery in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and at The Wiederspahn in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Another part of the plan called for a catering kitchen and a place for private parties. They're still working on that, and it'll be called The Holstein Haus. Dave installed a mile of electrical wiring in the building to handle all the different loads that would make up parts of the multifaceted operation.

While they concentrated on the barn, there's still more to the operation. There were several outbuildings on the place, and the 10,000-square-foot machine shed was turned into a storage place for boats, recreational vehicles and the like. The storage side of the business is called 'The Silver Windmill." Of course, there's a freshly painted windmill on the place.

In their studio Dawn and Dave Tubbs display some of the graphic arts work Dawn does in addition to her many other artistic pursuits.

Dawn, who has graphic arts and sign painting segments in her artistic businesses, also teaches art. Dave operates an office out of the home. He works for Munroe Process and Technology of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he's corporate manager of the perishable tooling division. His main office is at a nearby John Deere plant, and Deere is his primary customer.

While they aren't particularly in the agriculture business, they did have some cattle. "We had nine head," Dawn says, "but they got to be too much for us to handle. They're still here, but my Dad works them."

Dave says, "When we started this venture six years ago, we knew we wanted to do several small businesses, and we knew we'd have to work closely with the zoning people to keep everything legal. We finally got a special usage permit for small rural light industrial usage, and that pretty well takes care of everything we do here." While many tend to think of diversification as corn and soybeans plus some kind of specialty crop, Dave and Dawn Tubbs have found a way to put real diversity into their family operation!

MARCH 1996 • ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING 25