Barn attracts fun-seekers

There’s a place near Deerfield where people can throw a party on a grand scale. It’s Schuster’s Farm, owned by Don and Theresa Schuster.

Don Schuster grew up on a dairy, hog and cash-crop farm near Sun Prairie, but it was sold. He said he was bouncing off the walls looking for something to do when he and his wife, Theresa Schuster, discovered a property for sale.

“Theresa called me and said she’d driven past and noticed the for-sale sign,” Don Schuster said.

The couple had looked at a bunch of places but he said they were either junk or the sellers were asking too much money. The Schusters took a two-hour tour of the latest property for sale – and bought it. In the spring of 1994, after three years of varying ventures – including growing tobacco and breeding miniature donkeys – they planted pumpkins.

“(And then) my wife convinced me to purchase a hay wagon,” Schuster said. “School tours started after that and we have been too busy to ever look back.”

After they purchased the farm he had noticed emergency medical technicians would come onto their driveway to transfer corpses to the mortician’s vehicle.

“I finally asked the EMTs why they came to my property,” he said. “They said it was a great exchange point because everyone knew it was easy to find the round barn.”

Schuster quickly put an end to that practice. Now there’s a parking lot where the bodies were formerly transferred.

Other than the uniqueness of it being round, the Schusters originally saw little value in the barn structure.

“It was decrepit, the tin roof was leaking and the posts were deteriorated,” Schuster said. “I was thinking it was all going to collapse.”