Monday, January 14, 2008

Abandoned (part 1)



I got out this morning and took a few pictures. As you can see from the first picture, I can't exactly tell you where. Have you ever thought about something you wanted to do for so long that you thought you had figured it out just the way you wanted it, then you start and it changes and grows and morphs into something completely different? That's what happened today. This old farmstead has been empty for a few years now. The old farmer is gone, no one left to take over or just no one cared. I use the word farm loosely, I don't think there have been crops or livestock grown here for years before it went empty. The barn is down, the sheds are sagging, sliding off their foundations, foundations that themselves are falling apart, returning to the earth with the help of the weather and more than a few groundhogs. I slipped in here this morning and took some building shots, then I invited myself into some of the outbuildings. What I found inside got me rethinking what it was that I originally intended to do. I started seeing things. Seeing bits and pieces of another life or maybe another's life. Like this paint can. It must be 30 years old. I don't think the old guy that lived here has been gone for five, yet here sits the Pratt and Lambert can just as it did when he last used it, waiting to do some touch up as soon as he needed. I found at this point I started snapping shots of stuff, junk, trash you could call it. But to this old farmer it meant something. Maybe it was for the milk house, maybe it was for the barnyard fence, maybe he just got too busy to straighten up the shed and toss it. Maybe.

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