Within the next generation or two, these old farms will be mostly lost. Not more than two generations ago, there were operational farms everywhere. Similar to the loss of small main street businesses to mega mass-merchants, family farms have lost ground to agricultural giants. Over the past few years global food security has risen as an important topic for policy planners. Current large scale operations are simply not sustainable and like the images in this post, they may someday be subjects of abandonment. With growing interest in sustainability and locally grown produce, perhaps we’ll see these beautiful structures one day return to the countryside.
The images in this post were from an abandoned farm in Ruffin, North Carolina, between Reidsville and Yanceyville on Hwy 158 in Caswell County. This past July, I noticed the farm while my Scout Troop was traveling to Cherokee Scout Camp near Yanceyville. The following weekend I stopped on the way back from camp to capture these images. The morning sun was peaking in and out of the clouds, creating ideal lighting conditions for the contrasty white barn and wood shed. Another interesting characteristic of this barn was the dead vines still clinging to sides, you can see where they had been cut away from the ground. Vines are the first phase of Mother Nature’s reclamation of man made creations. Perhaps this was an earlier intervention intended to slow that process.
All the images in this series were processed in Lightroom and Photoshop, and finished with Alien Skin’s Exposure 7 to emulate Agfa black & white film.
