Glimpses of a Farm that Once Was: A Photo Collection

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.

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.

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.