We owned 70 acres in what is known as the Driftless Area. An area where the glaciers did not go through thus it was rugged, hilly and had beautiful rock faces. It was comprised of a lovely valley with beautiful rock face, a gentle stream, a machine shed, a big old barn and a home that replaced the original farmhouse. It was a long ranch type home that we completed updated. It was all glass windows on one side that faced a big, beautiful pond where flocks of geese would fly in, where deer would drink and where our ducks and geese would swim and play about. Our land butted up to a beautiful state park. We had a large vegetable garden, a cut flower garden and many apple trees. We are both lovers of all animals and we gathered and acquired a lot of them. Most of them were rescues but some of them were purchased because we were going to breed them and make lots of money...didn't happen...we kept most of them because they became our pets. We did have a herd of fiber sheep, and I would spin and sell their fiber. We also purchased and grew a herd of Black Angus which we will sell off the calves every year. I acquired many llamas in various ways. And we would purchase peacocks, chickens, ducks and geese at every bird sale that we would go to several times a year. There was always a color or type that we didn't already have...and needed. I had to keep working a paying job just to support this crew that I loved so much...So...
Every morning, for years now, I would drive past this abandoned farm on my way to work in Social Services for the County. I could have gone straight out to the highway and had a shorter commute to work, but I preferred to go the scenic route through a State Park that abuts our farm. When I would come upon this farm, I'd often pull over and imagine the good times and the bad times that this farm had probably seen over the years. From the broken sections of wire fences you could picture where the animals were kept, where the garden was vegetable garden was planted and where the once pruned apple trees produced fresh apples for summer eating and canned apples for the long winter.
I'm sure there were happy times at this family farm. Celebrations when there was a good corn and bean crop, close times when there was a birth of a healthy child. Everyone running outside and throwing hands to the sky when a much-needed rain shower would finally arrive during a dry season. Fun times picking apples, pie making and putting up the sweet fruit for the longer winter months. Probably, but hopefully not, an equal number of hard times and sad times were had there also. Extreme weather conditions that were so stressful both physically and mentally, fires in the home and in the barns where hay can smolder and destroy buildings so easily. Sometimes trapping and killing animals, and probably illnesses both in the family and in the animals that they depended upon for milk, meat and income. The isolation due to hard conditions and really no time to be anywhere else, the sad deaths of young and old and crop destruction because of bugs, birds and deer.
I could see the animal tracks in the snow in the colder seasons and also the worn dirt trails through the grasses in the warmer seasons. The wild life would usually follow the same paths through the open fields and then disappear into the woods. The deer would forage and walk the corn fields during the evening hours finding any kernels of corn or beans left from the last crop and then find a safe, cool place to sleep in the summer and a heavy pine bough to lie beneath to sleep protected from the cold and snow in the winter. Since no one had lived on or operated this farm in years, the deer had found this to be a quiet, safe place to give birth and raise their young. There is a small stream near one of the many sheds which made this a perfect spot for a family and now also for wild life.
The house is located on the highest part of the property which saved the home from flooding when there were driving winds and rains and the water level rose in nearby rivers and lakes. This farm house felt every drop of rain, every strike of lightening and thunder clap and received a ruthless beating from hail storms. It is still standing strong having survived years of winds that ranged from warm summer breezes to strong relentless blasts of tornado strength winds.
Farm life is not easy today and it certainly was not easy when this farm was in operation. Never a day off, always watching the weather, always hoping and praying for more rain or less rain always worried about food and family. And yet, small farms like this still survive and generation after generation continue to live and love the farm life.
One December day, while driving by, I noticed that there was a holiday looking wreath affixed in the upper arch of the barn face. I wonder whether someone like me that looks at this farm each day just put it up because they felt it needed something happy or if someone has actually either purchased or someone in the family has decided to bring it back to its former glory. I will be anxious to see...I'm just glad either way that it received some attention...a lot of years have passed without the sounds of a family or farm animals, the sounds this farm knows deep within its soul.
