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| abandoned barn, Dublin, Ohio (click to embiggen) |
As my Facebook friends know, I've been posting a series of photos titled "Abandoned America", most of which I took in and around my neck of the woods, Central Ohio. Hope you enjoy these places, truly majestic in their own right, as much as I did. Stay tuned for more images in the coming weeks.
Another night, I dreamed
I saw my father
sweeping
out the barn floor clean,
and would not suffer the wheat
to be brought
in the barn.
He appeared to me to be in anger.
We were in Vermont recently, and there are so many abandoned barns now. Property taxes are up, I think, and many people are just letting these places fall down.
ReplyDeleteBut there is something majestic in the way they fall. The weathered wood, the broken roof, the beams that once held it all together are all laying together in one big pile. Beautiful and so sad.
Lovely post, and beautiful image
Beautiful -- old barns are my favorite. We have a lot of abandoned homeplaces here in Kentucky and my husband and I like to explore them (when it isn't snake season!).
ReplyDeleteIt's a sad dichotomy that a bad economy breeds preservation (which is really leaving something as it is, vs. restoration).
http://inthepantry.blogspot.com/2008/04/homeplace.html
Old barns are enchanted places...I adore them, I have spent hours and hours taking photos of them....wonderful :)
ReplyDeleteOh, yes the smells, the lingering scent of hay and horses. When I was a child my father would take me to the barns at the race track (cousins raced horses)and the tack room was overwhelming with scent of leather and oils. Thanks for the step back to remember a special time. I'll be looking for more of your photos.
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ReplyDeleteYes, there is something very sad about farms, left lifeless, for whatever reason, like a crumpled dixie cup along the highway.
ReplyDeleteI find old barns a mixture of good memories and bad ones. The barn over the road from my workshop was host to a man from Liverpool for two weeks during the summer a few years ago, who hanged himself with a piece of baling twine from a beam in it. When the police finally identified him, they found his father and broke the news on the doorstep in Liverpool, and the father dropped dead on the spot.
ReplyDeleteLike the farmer said - "2 in one go - that's not bad for trespassers".
Tom, sadly, a former owner of Willow Manor hung himself on one of the large old pine trees in the front, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying their beauty every day.
ReplyDeleteNor me, Tess. If you put a black mark on a map where anyone has died over the last 1000 years, there wouldn't be hardly a clear spot. Sometimes those events make - in a strange way - the area even more beautiful.
ReplyDeleteYes, earthy beauty in an almost sacred way.
ReplyDeleteAbandoned America. Abandoned by common sense in D.C.?
ReplyDeleteBlessings and Bear hugs, from a Canadian friend, in your "interesting times."
I can relate to you're love of old abandoned buildings. My hubby & I went for a drive throught the hinterland on the weekend & we passed a very delapitated old colonial home, with the outback toilet & detached kitchen. It was way beyond repair. I shared with my husband how sad it made me feel to see someones home in such a state. At some stage of it's existance it would have been loved & cared for as a prized possession & now it was discarded but somehow to me it was still beautiful.
ReplyDeletea couple of years ago, Marc and I were in NY state to teach a workshop and the owners of the studio also had an old house (circa 1830 or so) that they were converting into a sort of bed and breakfast where they would house the students. When we were there only one bedroom was finished, one bathroom and the kitchen and dining room. we were the only people staying at the house, the students put up in a hotel. on the property was also an old barn which we explored. found a little tin box with letters written from a soldier to his sweetheart during WWII.
ReplyDeleteEllen, I can't imagine what a thrill it was to find the tin box and WWII letter. Those kinds of treasures give me goosebumps!
ReplyDeleteTess-- Nice that you have joined forces to show the country our beautiful handcrafted farm buildings, our wonderous past of the true builders of our culture. -- barbara
ReplyDeleteabsolutely fantastic, my favorite spooky poignant sort of thing. We are seeing a great deal of abandoned America on our road trip too!
ReplyDeleteWe had a barn exactly like that; it was our playground, but burned when I was 8.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the picture...
This is so haunting.
ReplyDeleteYou should send them to your senator. :)
I don't know what it is about rural decay that I find so lovely....
ReplyDeleteOh,I have to go look at them all, Tess! This is a wonderful photo. I can almost smell it. We used to spend summers at my mom's best friend's house in NY state, on her dairy farm. This brings back warm memories of that for me.
ReplyDeleteI have also always been attracted to old abandoned buildings- especially out in the country side-- the epitome of silence-- which is also so Zen.
ReplyDeleteI've recently bought an old wooden tobacco drying barn, and we've just started the task of converting half of it into a house. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!!
ReplyDeleteLooks as though birds have been nesting there, Tess. Any idea what they may be?
ReplyDeleteSo much character in those old bones mate! I recently watched a Doco called "Gaslands" where rural families were being forced off there land because of problems with Natural Gas wells contaminating there water. I shudder at the thought of all that beautiful countryside becoming a wasteland. If those old walls could speak what would they say of humans and folly and mountains of hay.
ReplyDeleteThat is a fabulous photograph Tess : and the words aren't half bad either. From one abandoned place to another - greetings.
ReplyDeletei love abandoned places too. this barn is lovely. we have an old barn, though not as derelict as this, on the property. part of it though is quite falling down. Old stanchions (sp?) still hang in the cow stalls. those smells you mention are prevalent. and i think i heard a cow ghost moooo.
ReplyDeleteAbandoned places capture my imagination too. I want to know the history, what the living in them was like, but even more the story of the ending. What was the final straw, when the last inhabitants final said good by? Were they planning to somehow find a way back? Are there ghosts there still, watching over the place?
ReplyDeleteTess I too love deserted buildings and the energy they still exude.
ReplyDeleteHow are you my dear?
Yes, there is a beauty in these places. And what stories they suggest, held in memory.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why, but I feel this old barn is waiting for a good old fashioned barn dance. I immediately conjured up a movie set...those baleful bales of hay up in the rafters....Oklahoma! I prefer to think about it's happier days.
ReplyDeleteLovely image. I agree about abandoned buildings.
ReplyDeleteMartin, I think those are bales of hay, still in the hayloft. Either that, or really, really large birds! giggle
ReplyDeleteIt's a beautiful barn
ReplyDeleteand a beautiful pic
beautiful light
beautiful colors
beautiful shapes
and angles and lines
It moves sarcasm out the door in a
"scuze me sir" rush
leaves jokes for later
leaves witicisms for witty notebooks
opens your eyes
your heart
your memories
your smells
to barn past times
old farmers I'd knowed and loved
in that distant New England manner
where close friendship
meant
getting invited inside
and getting
a big green
hubbard
as a present
for
winter stew.
Another lover of abandoned old buildings here.... particularly farms and cottages.... you can sense their history...it's fun to walk around, and think about who walked here and what occured in this lives. (Not so much fun to see abandoned bildings in big city though....they wreak of despair and sadness...)
ReplyDeleteLove your FB series.... it's wonderful!
Hugs from San Francisco,
♥ Robin ♥
Dear Tess: Reminds me of the time as a teenager As a teenager I'd frequent abandoned and dilapitated old homesteads and buildings. To my chagrin when I noticed the locals lined up at the end of the fence. A call to granny and all was well, of course I had to apologize profusely. Didn't notice the old No TRespassing sign but I did notice the old tins of Maxell House coffee..good to the last drop!
ReplyDeleteAnon, this is quite wonderful. Thank you!
ReplyDeletemy pleasure Tess Known
ReplyDeleteI love the way that photograph sucks you in to the blackness... beautiful!
ReplyDeletea magnificent image - a magnificent structure - still - and so many stories held in the grains of each of those planks that seem to speak from some other place - it's always such a joy coming by your place - i've said before it's one of those blogs where i could come by and bring a sack lunch and just sit browse and absorb! thanks for having me!
ReplyDelete..abandoned places like this always have a reserved space in my heart.. from such i do not intend to witness the real drama of whom who made their living there though failed to make it in our times... there's always a special call that allows me to dig back all forgotten beauty that once seize the world yet now a living soul of tangible memory. Thank you for finding the beauty hidden in this precious barn Tess.
ReplyDeleteGood day.
~Kelvin
This very past weekend my husband and I traveled along the Ohio river not far from Wheeling W.Va.
ReplyDeleteI too was thinking of abandoned America as I glanced upon crumbling factories and mills (steel)as we went speeding by.
What a beautiful category for U.S.
Postage stamps...Abandoned America
Penny, it would, indeed be a wonderful series for U.S. Postage stamps!
ReplyDeleteI love these old buildings too - they must hold so many memories for those long gone. In New Zealand there are many, many such old wooden buildings lying derelict, mostly old sheep shearing sheds, shearers sheds, barns and farmer's cottages. Most enigmatic are the chimneys standing alone and folorn in the paddocks. How many babies born, lives lived, last breaths exhaled in front of these hearths? What stories there are to be told, if only one could gather them up again from where they have scattered.
ReplyDeleteBrett, yes, the lone crumbled chimneys, hearths long cold, call to me, as well.
ReplyDeleteLove the photo, and such a brilliant idea Tess -- write a poem for every photo and you have a highly marketable "coffee table" book...
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