SUBLETTE, Ill. — Bob Anderson hopes he’s building small barns faster than the real ones are being razed, but he fears it’s a losing proposition.

Anderson showed and sold a number of his model farm buildings at the 30th annual Sublette Farm Toy Show in Illinois.

The Ottawa, Ill., man said he grew up near Spring Valley.

“There was a beautiful barn across the creek. I used to go study by that barn and I always thought I wanted to build one like it,” he explained.

So in the mid-1980s, he started building. Each of his scale-model barns, outhouses, chicken coops and windmills are cut one piece at a time and assembled by hand.

He said many are modeled on barns he’s seen in his travels around northern Illinois.

A rough brick barn, made from modeling clay, is a miniature replica of a building near Sublette. It’s actually visible from Interstate 39, just a couple of miles south of the U.S. Route 30 exit at Mendota.

Anderson figures he has built approximately 2,000 barns in the 30-plus years he’s been building them.

“I work on five or six at a time. It takes about three weeks to finish them. You have to let the glue dry and then you have let the stain dry,” Anderson explained.

He said he travels all over northern Illinois showing and selling his work. “I used to take special orders, but I don’t do that anymore.”