Glimpses of a Farm that Once Was: A Photo Collection

by AbbyFitz

Many farms have been turned over to ruin and are only skeletons of their former selves. View photographs of a farm where time has stood still.

America was once a nation of farmers which produced food, not only for themselves, but for the rest of the country.

Those farms have all but disappeared. They exist now only in the memories of the farmers' elderly children.

On a plat of 80 acres in the Missouri Ozarks stands an abandoned farm where time has literally stood still. The owners long since passed, their children are not willing to let the farm go.

The result is a farm that is stuck in time. Vintage farming equipment lay ready to be hitched to team horses. Decaying farm buildings stand empty, waiting for a harvest that will never come.

Enjoy a pictorial tour of the Missouri farm that is trapped in time.

The Sun Sets on the Old Barn Once Again

Another of Many Sunsets the Old Barn Has Seen
An Old Abandoned Barn in Missouri
An Old Abandoned Barn in Missouri
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Feeding Stalls in the Old Barn
Feeding Stalls in the Old Barn
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A Winter Coat Hangs Inside the Abandoned Barn
A Winter Coat Hangs Inside the Abando...
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A Farm From the Past

Now only a shell of itself.

 

 

On the top of a small hill stands an old barn. It once stood proud, made from oak with a shiny new tin roof. Rotted and rusty, it now only gives a glimpse of its busy past.

Once the neglected barn knew much activity. The Old Farmer was up every morning before sunrise to milk and feed the cows.

Here, calves were weaned from their mother. Feed was kept in the grain containers for the pigs, horses, and chickens. In the summer, hay was stored upstairs.

The old corral that once held cows waiting to go to market is now only filled with half grown trees and a trough that waits to be filled.

Inside the barn door hangs the coat of the Old Farmer who hung it there in his last winter of 1983.

In a nearby stall, the horse collar hangs on the wall, waiting to be placed on Bessie or Maude for a ride into town.

The Old Barn's Interior and the Overgrown Corral

A Horse Collar Hangs Inside an Abandoned Barn
A Horse Collar Hangs Inside an Abandoned Barn
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The Abandoned Cattle Corral
The Abandoned Cattle Corral
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Vintage Farming Equipment

Waiting For the Next Season

Scattered in the field surrounding the barn is the farming equipment the Old Farmer used to run his once thriving farm.

 

Combs, hay rakes, and plows stand just where he left them so long ago. They're rusty now, of course, but they were once the pride and joy of the Old Farmer.

 

For at least 50 years they have seen the sun rise and the sun set, still waiting to be hitched to Bessie and Maude to do a day's work.

 

Some are still waiting to be discovered. Parts of the old barnyard have been taken over by the forest. Sometimes trees fall or bushes die and reveal the mechanical wonders of their time.

Antique Farming Equipment: Horse Drawn Hay Rake
Antique Farming Equipment: Horse Draw...
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Antique Farming Equipment: Horse Drawn Plow
Antique Farming Equipment: Horse Draw...
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Vintage Horse Drawn Tractors

Waiting for the Plow Horses
Antique Farming Equipment: Horse Drawn Tractor
Antique Farming Equipment: Horse Drawn Tractor
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Antique Horse Drawn Tractor
Antique Horse Drawn Tractor
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Old Abandoned Cellar and Smokehouse
Old Abandoned Cellar and Smokehouse
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Antique Wash Tub by a Fence
Antique Wash Tub by a Fence
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The Abandoned Cellar and Chicken House

Once They Stored Food, Now Only Memories

In the hot Missouri summers, the Good Wife preserved the harvest over a wood fired cook stove inside the farmhouse.

Down in the cellar she kept jars of green beans, squash, tomatoes, blackberry jelly, and more which would feed her family of 10 through the cold winter to come.

Behind the cellar is an old washtub. The Good Wife and her three daughters spent many backbreaking hours scrubbing the clothes clean for the family.

They might be poor, but they would be clean. The Good Wife made sure of that.

The Old Farmer had dug the cellar out by hand until he reached a solid slab of stone, which made a perfect floor.

The chicken house served as both a roost for the chickens, and a place to hang his crosscut saws and tools. Everything at the Old Farmer's farm must serve more than one purpose.

Antique Farming Tools

Still Hanging Where the Old Farmer Put Them
Antique Cross Cut Saws Hang on a Chicken House
Antique Cross Cut Saws Hang on a Chicken House
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The Old Farm Could Tell a Thousand Stories

Pictures Let Us Imagine the Past
Stone Wall Built By the Old Farmer's Hands
Stone Wall Built By the Old Farmer's ...
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Antique Disk Plow
Antique Disk Plow
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Antique Refrigerator Next to the Old Barn
Antique Refrigerator Next to the Old ...
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The Old Barbed Wire Fence Line
The Old Barbed Wire Fence Line
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The Beauty of Abandoned Places

Imaginations Run Wild

Abandoned places are sad, yet beautiful at the same time. They will soon decay into oblivion, but they allow us to imagine a life in the distant past.

Photographically recording these places will let others see the beauty and imagine stories years after they have deteriorated into nothing.

This farm is my grandparents' farm in Southern Missouri. All I have are faint memories of my grandfather and the stories he would tell of his farm.

Growing up, I would hear my grandmother, mother, and aunts reminisce about the hard work and wonderful times they had so long ago.

Both of my grandparents have passed on. Their surviving children cannot bear to see the old farm sold or changed.

Soon my son or his future children will not even know there was a farm here. By these pictures they will be able to remember a farm that once was.

A Book of Photos of Abandoned Places

Abandoned Homes and Farms Have a Haunted Beauty All Their Own
Updated: 11/08/2019, AbbyFitz
 
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AbbyFitz on 08/05/2014

It is sad. Thanks for reading!

LizMac67 on 08/05/2014

Lovely photos but also so sad. Where there was once such life and abundance now there is just ruin and memory.

AbbyFitz on 02/27/2014

I really want that book lol

ologsinquito on 02/27/2014

That book you featured looks great. Sometimes I wish we could go back in time and just spend a few days hanging out at these old farms.

AbbyFitz on 12/13/2013

That was my favorite photo. It looks like it was hung up there to be used the next day and the next day never came.

DerdriuMarriner on 12/13/2013

AbbyFitz, Such a lovely tribute to this farm, which we learn at the end belonged to your grandparents. The photo entitled "A Horse Collar Hangs Inside an Abandoned Barn" captures the atmosphere and mystique of sunlight filtering through old wood.

AbbyFitz on 08/21/2013

Thank you, I'm glad you liked them

moonlake on 08/21/2013

I love old places. Your photos are beautiful.

AbbyFitz on 06/17/2013

Thank you!

jptanabe on 06/17/2013

Excellent job of preserving these memories!


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