Picture of the day - September 16, 2005

An Old Barn In Southwestern Virginia

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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