The Family Farm

I grew up in a rural area and live on the periphery of one now. I’ve watched the family farm slowly fade or fleet from existence. I enjoy the sight of these farms with their barns, fields, machinery, farm houses, long driveways, etc. I decided I needed to capture some of them before they are all gone. As I was taking the photos, I encountered numerous places where I knew a farm had stood and it was gone. Another reminder of why I’m capturing these.

The Small Town

With the passing of the small family farm and modernization of agriculture production the opportunities for rural young people are shrinking as they are forced to move to the urban areas for employment opportunities.

Gone are the young people that would breathe life into and keep a community going to urban areas, many small towns are left with an aging population who have done their share for a community already, but are asked to do more by virtue of being the only ones left to do it.   This works for some of the community needs, but small towns need fire and ambulance crews and those are almost exclusively volunteer and staffed by a younger segment of the population.

The small towns are in a state of change from vibrant business centers dotting the rural landscape to bedroom communities for larger cities or into towns that are an emaciated form of what they once were with many buildings standing empty or being repurposed for something completely different and in some cases the town ceases to exist and becomes just a cluster of houses somewhere in a rural area you’ll never see unless you have a map of the county or accidentally pass through one on your way elsewhere.

My goal is to document some of what the towns were before before they are gone, or have changed so much from what they once were.