I just recently ran across this old barn melting into the landscape. This woods doesn't look like old field timber to the casual observer, and I doubt anyone is alive that remembers when this was an active farm. Old homesteads are usually melted down to just the foundation stones, but the tree species will give them away as you walk into them.
Black walnut is usually growing around old home sites, even if it is not a good walnut site. Do you see the depression about ten feet beyond the tree? That is a partially collapsed well. It pays to be on the lookout for wells when you are tromping about. I was following a compass line one very wet day, and stopped in mid-stride because I couldn't see the bottom of a puddle that I was about to step in. I picked up a long stick and checked the depth, and it was no puddle. Old wells are one reason I always carry a whistle with me in the woods.
I just recently ran across this old barn melting into the landscape. This woods doesn't look like old field timber to the casual observer, and I doubt anyone is alive that remembers when this was an active farm. Old homesteads are usually melted down to just the foundation stones, but the tree species will give them away as you walk into them.
Black walnut is usually growing around old home sites, even if it is not a good walnut site. Do you see the depression about ten feet beyond the tree? That is a partially collapsed well. It pays to be on the lookout for wells when you are tromping about. I was following a compass line one very wet day, and stopped in mid-stride because I couldn't see the bottom of a puddle that I was about to step in. I picked up a long stick and checked the depth, and it was no puddle. Old wells are one reason I always carry a whistle with me in the woods.
Where was this at? Makes you wonder what the story is, doens't it? There's a foundation in the back-acres that I walk by on occasion but I could never find out anything about it.
ReplyDeleteThis old farm is just north of Springerton, IL on the foot of the bluff south of the Little Wabash floodplain. These bluff sites are great for growing timber because they have deep loess soil with no fragipan layer. The trees root deeply and are not affected by dry summers nearly as much as trees on uplands at the top of the bluffs.
ReplyDeleteThese old farm remnants are disappearing rapidly. Two years ago I looked in an old shed with lots of Model T parts hanging on the walls and lying about. The next time I visited the farm, the shed had been demolished.