Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | winter 2006
Bob and Loy Walker

 


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Loy and Bob Walker: Bed and breakfast on an Iowa farm

Loy Walker’s bed and breakfast was born out of necessity. During the U.S. farm crisis of the mid-1980s, Loy and her husband, Bob, were looking for any way they could find to increase their income.

“I needed a job,” Loy remembers. “I was 50 years old, and I had a resume three pages long, and nobody would hire me.”

Then the Walkers’ daughter, who had stayed at B&Bs in Europe, suggested that they ought to open up the family’s Marengo, Iowa, farmhouse to guests. Visitors could experience farm life, shop and dine in the nearby Amana Colonies, and enjoy a big farm breakfast in the morning. Loy’s Farm B&B was created.

That was in 1985, when Bob (’56 farm operation) was still farming 6,000 acres of cropland and running a farrow-to-finish hog operation. They built their agri-tourism business touting the opportunity to ride on a tractor and hold a baby pig.

“I always told people that baby pigs were a lot like people,” Bob laughs. “They start out real cute, but they grow up big and ugly.”

The hog operation is gone now, and Bob is “retired” – only farming 1,500 acres. Their four children have all graduated from Iowa State (Angela, ’82; Theresa, ’83; Eric, ’85; and Brett, ’86). But the bed and breakfast business continues.

Loy (’57 home economics education) offers her guests one of three themed rooms – named Carousel, Reflections, and Iowa State – in the Walkers’ spacious farmhouse, built in 1976. There, surrounded by rolling Iowa farmland, guests can play shuffleboard, pool, ping-pong, croquet, horseshoes, and table games. They can wander a short distance to play golf, hike, and hunt deer or pheasants. They can return to their rural roots on a cornfield tour with Bob, where he’ll explain the sex life of the corn plant. (“That shocks some people when you say that,” Loy says.) They can sit by the fire, watch the sunrise from the patio, and lounge on the screened-in porch. And they can take day trips to the Amana Colonies, Iowa City, Kalona, and the nearby outlet mall.



Breakfast is a meal to be savored at Loy’s B&B, with homemade cinnamon rolls, bacon and eggs, baked apples, biscuits and gravy, quiche, muffins, and other tempting menu selections. But it is the cornmeal waffles and sausage that have become Loy’s signature breakfast dishes.

“I finally decided that that’s my house specialty,” Loy said. “We were raising all this corn, and we had sausage from the hogs. We used to use all our own products. Now that we don’t have the hogs, we get sausage from our sons-in-law.”

Bob and Loy, who have been married 48 years, share kitchen duties, with Loy rising most mornings at 6 a.m. to prepare cinnamon rolls or bake a quiche. Bob arrives in the kitchen later to pour orange juice, fry eggs, and flip pancakes – “taking all the glory,” Loy complains.
It’s all part of the job when you’re running a farm B&B.

Read on | The elegant little inn by the river