They all dated from my pre-digital era when a much-traveled Yashica 35mm SLR recorded significant events and memories of all sorts. I still have that camera and the three lenses that accompanied it. There also happens to be a bazillion of these old-school film cameras for sale on eBay - but I digress.
Until I found these photos I hadn't thought much about what an absolute armpit dump this place was when we purchased it. Ghastly.
There was an ancient falling-down barn, a raccoon-infested granary, rotting pump house, massive concrete silo, a dangerous open pit of a foundation where the original house once stood, a collapsing garage and a couple of shallow wells.
Add fifty-gallon drums, countless old tires and trash of all sorts and rusty, broken farm implements that had been dumped here.
Moreover, everything was overgrown with trees and brush.
In the intervening years much has changed. The barn was disassembled and salvageable timbers and siding were repurposed in newer construction further north on the peninsula. A machine shed was constructed and the old house foundation filled and leveled. The wells were filled, capped and properly abandoned. Underground electrical utility brought in. The ancient granary was restored in stages - new roof, modern electrical, new board-and-batten siding and a concrete slab foundation. The silo was knocked-apart and buried - becoming a vast underground hibernaculum for the resident fox snakes. A house was constructed where the barn once stood and indoor plumbing arrived for the first time. Even the pump house was resurrected and found a new life as a potting shed for the missus.
The place cleaned-up rather nicely and the neighbors are all in agreement that we're rather nice to have as neighbors. And that's just what happened on the footprint of the old barnyard. I'll save the rest of the story for another day.
click on images for a closer look
Raising a toast to a nice blend of old and new.
Cheers!
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