NEWS
Clinton County farm maintains family legacy
The Stine-Anderson Family Farm in Frankfort wins the 2025 John Arnold Award for Rural Preservation.
Home Grown
Some say farming is in the blood, an adage the Anderson family of Clinton County embodies on their 800-acre grain farm southwest of Frankfort, extending a family legacy that stretches back many generations. Recognizing the family’s commitment to preserving the historic farm and maintaining its buildings in their operations, Indiana Landmarks and Indiana Farm Bureau selected the Stine-Anderson Family Farm as winner of the 2025 John Arnold Award for Rural Preservation.
Stan and Lois Anderson live in the historic house on the 195-acre farmstead, which serves as home base for the corn and soybean operation and a recently added pick-your-own flower enterprise. Stan’s brother, Don, helps manage the day-to-day farm operation while another brother, Phil, and an aunt are also part landowners.
Stan’s maternal grandparents, George and Delia Stine, purchased the farmhouse and surrounding acreage in 1944. Roughhewn timber in the room that serves as the farm office dates to the house’s construction in the late 1800s, while leaded and art glass windows and the fireplace’s green tile surround offer clues to a Craftsman-style makeover in the early twentieth century.
Kenneth and Virginia Anderson, Stan’s parents, moved into the house in 1966, and it played a central role in Stan and his three siblings’ childhood growing up and working on the farm. During a major upgrade to the home’s interior in 2005, the family took care in maintaining the house’s original character, retaining pocket doors, and restoring Douglas fir and oak woodwork and a grand staircase.
Making use of materials at hand is a practical approach the Andersons have extended to other historic buildings on the property. They adapted a historic smokehouse to serve as additional office space, incorporating vintage wood siding. A back patio includes brick pavers salvaged from a former nearby school once attended by family members.
A century-old three-bay timber frame barn stands at the heart of the farming operation. The family raised the ceiling of the barn’s east hayloft—once used for hay storage and feeding beef cattle—to serve as a farm shop to maintain modern farm equipment. The barn’s other bays and three granaries are repurposed to serve as storage for parts, supplies, and other vehicles. The barn was selected in 2016 as one of 200 Bicentennial Barns to celebrate the state’s birthday and agrarian values.
Through the years, the farm added two 32- by 64-foot pole barns used for equipment storage, as well as a smaller pole barn for lawnmowers and other small equipment, along with drying and storage bins used for grain storage.
In 2019, after retiring from 40 years of elementary teaching, Lois Anderson collaborated with brother-in-law Don, a landscaper, to create flower beds in former pastureland north of the barn. Their personal passion gave rise to the Anderson U-Pick Flower Farm, started in 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic was creating a demand for outdoor activities. Magazine and blog write-ups drew customers from far away, and the flower farm has since expanded into agritourism, hosting outdoor concerts, a plein air paint-out, tours for school groups, and other events. The Andersons repurposed the farm’s historic scale building for the flower business, with the vintage Moline scale box on display as a nod to the structure’s original use.
In 2023, a tornado damaged the roofs of all the Stine-Anderson Farm buildings and battered doors on the pole barns. The family took advantage of the opportunity to create a cohesive design, reroofing the house and garage and replacing the barn roofs and doors in a matching scheme. “A certain degree of creativity goes into maintaining and redoing these farm buildings,” says Phil Anderson. “It’s about repurposing them to be used in a different way while maintaining the farm’s heritage and viability.”
“It takes a lot of faith, family, farm—and now flowers—to thrive in todays’ agriculture industry,” says Stan.
This article first appeared in the September/October 2025 issue of Indiana Preservation, Indiana Landmarks’ member magazine.
Stay up to date on the latest news, stories, and events from Indiana Landmarks, around the state or in your area.