When I was
a child the only people who lived in the country were farmers and their
families. Most of the farms were small and diversified. The crops included
corn, wheat, soybeans and sometimes oats and milo. There were pastures where
cattle grazed. Nearly all the farms had vegetable gardens and flocks of
chickens. There were some pigs, a milk cow, beef cattle and a team of
workhorses that pulled wagons, cultivators, plows and other machinery. Water
came from a well via an outdoor pump and a kitchen pump. Indoor plumbing was
not the norm.
Today the
rural scene has changed dramatically. Just since Dennis and I moved to Paradise in
1976 our rural community has been transformed. I doubt that a single
diversified farm still operates here. The few farmers who remain own or rent hundreds of acres and plant them to corn, soybeans or wheat.
Rural structures are disappearing. Twenty-five
years ago I took this photo of a sweet old farmhouse.
Last month
we drove past its site to discover that only a heap of boards and a foundation
remain.
Some
farmsteads are intact, but are not active. In this one, an elderly widow lives
alone, her farmer husband having died decades ago. The farm’s fields are rented
out to big-scale farmers who drive gigantic, air-conditioned tractors.
Sometimes
the farmer is still producing grain crops, but the house has been torn down and
replaced by a doublewide trailer.
When we
first moved here we went to a nearby dairy to purchase gallons of raw milk.
Today the dairy cows are gone, the dairy and silos empty. The owner has a job
in town.
No new
wooden or stone barns are being built. Instead, people put up metal buildings
and sometimes live in part of them.
One of my
favorite farmhouses sat amidst these barns and outbuildings on County Road 460 before it was
razed last year.
Just across the
road from that old farm sits this MacMansion on five acres of closely mowed grass.
Gone are the milk cows, gone are the chickens, gone are the gardens. Gone is a way of
life that I remember fondly and with sadness.
Old MacDonald had a farm and on that farm he had nothing but grass.
Old MacDonald had a farm and on that farm he had nothing but grass.
1 comment:
Dang! That is sad, Mama! I would think more folks would be trying to grow their own food these days!
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