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Picture of the day - September 16, 2005
An Old Barn In Southwestern Virginia
Drive down most any country road in America and you're likely to see an old barn
or two. Whether you're traveling through cattle country out west, the hills of New England, the
Appalachian Mountain region or any rural area in between, there are plenty of old
barns to be found.
But unfortunately, the decline of small-time farming is resulting in many changes in
rural America. Family farms that have been in operation for decades are being
shut down and sold off at an alarming rate. They are often subdivided into
building lots, turning once-valuable farm land into residential communities.
Sometimes the old barns survive, but most often they don't.
Sometimes farmers will stop farming but hold on to their land. One would think
that would bode well for the old barns but that often isn't the case. Since the
farms are no longer being worked the barns are allowed to run down and simply
rot away.
A perfect example is the old barn featured in today's picture. I saw it the
other day as I was riding down a narrow country road near the southwestern
Virginia community of Friendship. Perhaps in times past this barn held tobacco
until it was ready to be "stripped off" and maybe a few hundred
bales of hay to feed the cows and horses during the winter. But one thing is
certain - it isn't storing anything of value now.
Like the numerous empty pasture fields and tobacco patches now scattered around
Washington County, many of these abandoned old barns serve as decaying monuments
to a simple lifestyle that served family farmers well for many years. Progress
often comes at a high price in rural America: the loss of a time-honored tradition in
which family farms supplied food for the farmers and their neighbors...and the
loss of some of America's most interesting structures - her old barns.
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