JUDA - For years, the Algers told themselves over and over, "Looks like crap ... but it's better than it was."
They don't need that mantra anymore.
Fourteen years after they bought a rambleshack property on Middle Juda Road, Linda and Mark "Kram" Alger have transformed it into an idyllic in-town farmstead dotted with flowers. It overlooks the Juda Creek and surrounding farmland. In 2010, they hung a barn quilt as part of a countywide effort to showcase local barns with artwork.
It caught the eye of Green County Tourism director Noreen Rueckert when she was scouting a cover photo for the 2012 Visitor Guide, and she coordinated a photo shoot with photographer Dennis Dalton.
"I liked the fact that theirs is a very attractive barn, and it was also conducive to using in the photo since it is close to the road," Rueckert said.
Appropriately enough, the barn quilt is called "Rising Star." The name is inspired by Linda's middle name, Esther, which has origins in the Persian word for star.
The year 2012 has treated the Algers well. Their home is finally taking shape in the ways they dreamed almost 15 years ago. And Kram (it's a childhood nickname that stuck) is healthy again and ready to go back to work at Alliant Energy in Madison after more than a year slowly healing from a back surgery that crippled him with pain.
Playing guitar kept him from "going batty." He's been recording his music with Empire Media Group in Monroe and posting the videos on his YouTube channel, youtube.com/eyekrameye.
Kram recently posted a video slideshow on YouTube that documents the transformation of the property, soundtracked to his own classical guitar composition, "Rising Star."
The formerly rundown state of the property is also apparent if you search for a street-view of the address on Google Maps, photographed sometime since Google Street View launched in 2007. The barn's paint is half gone, and the only barrier between the house and the hilly road is a patch of anemic-looking lawn.
"Oh, it's just awful," Linda said, shaking her head.
Go back even further, to the late 1990s, and the difference is even starker. When the Algers bought the property in 1998, it hadn't been a working dairy farm for almost 50 years.
"There were junk buildings everywhere," Kram said.
Rivulets of water leaked constantly through the basement of the house. The dirt driveway turned into a muddy pit whenever it rained. One of the barns had a swayback roof so saggy it looked like a saddle. At some point in the barn's history, someone had tried to save it by cabling together beams but did it wrong, weakening the barn even more.
It took a full decade to backhoe garbage out of the barns and remove the last of the junk buildings - "lousy-looking" shacks filled with debris and woodchuck families and collapsed sheds with dirt floors. The Algers also hauled out 18 dying trees, pulled up thickets of invasive species and dragged off long-forgotten slabs of concrete.
Even the ground itself was so studded with trash - farm tractor parts, oil filters, barbed wire, piles of nails - it snarled machinery.
"I ruined a mower back there," Kram said.
Now, the place looks like it could be a bed and breakfast or host wedding ceremonies. Linda tends a garden and keeps planting more and more flowers each year ("I can't seem to control myself"). The bounty includes American plums, cherries, brandywine tomatoes, mint, sunflowers and canna flowers that attract hummingbirds.
The Algers removed the saggy barn roof, replaced it with a lower ceiling and converted the barn into a roomy space for storing gardening supplies and hosting parties.
Bluebirds nest in the other barn. Linda is protective of them and has joined the Bluebird Restoration Association of Wisconsin.
Hosting a wedding in the backyard may not be that far off, actually.
Recently members of a wedding party wandered over from the Zion United Methodist Church across the street and posed for pictures by one of the Algers' barns.
"When we bought this place, no one would've done this," Kram said.
They don't need that mantra anymore.
Fourteen years after they bought a rambleshack property on Middle Juda Road, Linda and Mark "Kram" Alger have transformed it into an idyllic in-town farmstead dotted with flowers. It overlooks the Juda Creek and surrounding farmland. In 2010, they hung a barn quilt as part of a countywide effort to showcase local barns with artwork.
It caught the eye of Green County Tourism director Noreen Rueckert when she was scouting a cover photo for the 2012 Visitor Guide, and she coordinated a photo shoot with photographer Dennis Dalton.
"I liked the fact that theirs is a very attractive barn, and it was also conducive to using in the photo since it is close to the road," Rueckert said.
Appropriately enough, the barn quilt is called "Rising Star." The name is inspired by Linda's middle name, Esther, which has origins in the Persian word for star.
The year 2012 has treated the Algers well. Their home is finally taking shape in the ways they dreamed almost 15 years ago. And Kram (it's a childhood nickname that stuck) is healthy again and ready to go back to work at Alliant Energy in Madison after more than a year slowly healing from a back surgery that crippled him with pain.
Playing guitar kept him from "going batty." He's been recording his music with Empire Media Group in Monroe and posting the videos on his YouTube channel, youtube.com/eyekrameye.
Kram recently posted a video slideshow on YouTube that documents the transformation of the property, soundtracked to his own classical guitar composition, "Rising Star."
The formerly rundown state of the property is also apparent if you search for a street-view of the address on Google Maps, photographed sometime since Google Street View launched in 2007. The barn's paint is half gone, and the only barrier between the house and the hilly road is a patch of anemic-looking lawn.
"Oh, it's just awful," Linda said, shaking her head.
Go back even further, to the late 1990s, and the difference is even starker. When the Algers bought the property in 1998, it hadn't been a working dairy farm for almost 50 years.
"There were junk buildings everywhere," Kram said.
Rivulets of water leaked constantly through the basement of the house. The dirt driveway turned into a muddy pit whenever it rained. One of the barns had a swayback roof so saggy it looked like a saddle. At some point in the barn's history, someone had tried to save it by cabling together beams but did it wrong, weakening the barn even more.
It took a full decade to backhoe garbage out of the barns and remove the last of the junk buildings - "lousy-looking" shacks filled with debris and woodchuck families and collapsed sheds with dirt floors. The Algers also hauled out 18 dying trees, pulled up thickets of invasive species and dragged off long-forgotten slabs of concrete.
Even the ground itself was so studded with trash - farm tractor parts, oil filters, barbed wire, piles of nails - it snarled machinery.
"I ruined a mower back there," Kram said.
Now, the place looks like it could be a bed and breakfast or host wedding ceremonies. Linda tends a garden and keeps planting more and more flowers each year ("I can't seem to control myself"). The bounty includes American plums, cherries, brandywine tomatoes, mint, sunflowers and canna flowers that attract hummingbirds.
The Algers removed the saggy barn roof, replaced it with a lower ceiling and converted the barn into a roomy space for storing gardening supplies and hosting parties.
Bluebirds nest in the other barn. Linda is protective of them and has joined the Bluebird Restoration Association of Wisconsin.
Hosting a wedding in the backyard may not be that far off, actually.
Recently members of a wedding party wandered over from the Zion United Methodist Church across the street and posed for pictures by one of the Algers' barns.
"When we bought this place, no one would've done this," Kram said.