A Changing Landscape - Part II

To continue our drive from yesterday, I was beginning to see the cumulative effects of farm enlargement, as farms get purchased only for the land, the buildings redundant.  Only where the farm home is substantial, and presumably in good condition is it saved, usually for resale.

This looks like a beautiful old farm home, with an old tree-lined drive leading to the house.

Barns are redundant, often removed, or less commonly just left to fall down.

Fencerows get removed in favour of giant machinery, and woodlots get reduced, or even worse removed.

It's all a result of a switch to cash cropping from the former mixed farms, and cash cropping means grain drying and storage facilities like this one.  

This is a cash crop of a different kind, a farmer growing hay for sale.  There were three large stacks of hay like this, far more than you'd ever use on an individual farm.

And in the nearest village, an old one-room schoolhouse now a residence.

And a small rural cemetery, still maintained, but isolated among giant fields.

We ended up going through the tiny hamlet of Arkwright, a village my uncle often mentioned.

And my uncle's old farm, now a non-farm residence (occupied by my cousin actually), with the fields rented out.

I came home realizing that we had seen a very changed landscape, largely depopulated, with enormous fields, few fencerows, or even fences at all, few  barns, and even fewer farm homes.  And during harvest I'm sure there would be a lot of enormous equipment rolling across those fields.  The evidence of an earlier busy farming community is scattered and hard to notice, former schools or churches now residences, isolated rural cemeteries, former village stores now closed, and so on.  I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but I am sure that we've lost something.

Though I'm beginning to sound like an old man longing for a simpler time!!