Quote:
Farms that get well maintained are almost always farms with multiple people working in jobs that have health benefits, or ones where there's a crop which is supported by some kind of price controls, or where there's a close relationship between maintenance and ability to keep farming (dairies and egg and fryer factories). Or hobby farms of one sort or the other. Beautiful wooden barns fall down and get replaced with steel frame sheds or with long piles of round bales under big tarps: there's not the money in raising most crops anymore to put out the time and money good buildings take.
We were not farming this parcel when the barn came down (when I was ten), beyond feeding up a dozen or so Holstein replacement heifers: that was when Dad was working as a union carpenter. There was no well here then anyway, we had to haul water or use the neighbor's trough. When we lost use of the old dairy barn Dad was already dead, we switched to putting all our hay at the BIL's family place, and there was nobody to push through a replacement anyway.
This isn't a sob story, I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm mostly pointing out a situation which gets repeated on small farms all over western Washington and Oregon. I know other beef people who have lost all their barns to floods along the Chehalis, replaced them with a loafing shed and piles of tarp-covered round bales, and kept farming, and I know people who have lost everything they owned to the real-estate developers because they got hung up on keeping buildings, including homestead houses that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs and reroofing and rewiring and replumbing, drip drip drip wears away the stone. I have friends who have half a million dollars in cash flow on Farmer's Market operations who live in travel trailers parked inside of steel shop buildings.
It depends on priorities and budget; if your priorities are to keep farming and your budget is such that you have to let barns fall down or you pull them down and sell the barn wood to people who make stuff for eBay, well, you do that. It's got no moral dimension beyond the commitment to a single piece of land or a group of neighbors or a way of life.
I think it's better than selling out and losing one of the few open places to more boring pale-grey houses with big complicated roofs and not enough yard too grow a vegetable garden. I know it's better than the great emptiness on both sides of I-90 in Lincoln County Washington, where all the farmsites have been replaced by more wheat, the few yard lights left shining over equipment sheds with no residences nearer them than a mile in any direction. The first time we took my daughter to Missoula I was shocked at the difference everywhere east of Moses Lake, houses which were landmarks to me when I was at WSU gone completely, farmsteads of house and barn and shop and sheds and windbreak replaced with ploughed ground.
We've been here since before 1900. We are still here now. These are the buildings we have right now- things may change. They've changed before, they will change again.
Hey, no problem. Don't sell wood on ebay and not talking about 'moral dimension', just was curious about animal housing. Nice you are committed to your land. Your situation is so depressing to me it makes mine look like a piece of cake. I guess I have lots to be thankful for! Hope your Thanksgiving is full of thanks too!
Farms that get well maintained are almost always farms with multiple people working in jobs that have health benefits, or ones where there's a crop which is supported by some kind of price controls, or where there's a close relationship between maintenance and ability to keep farming (dairies and egg and fryer factories). Or hobby farms of one sort or the other. Beautiful wooden barns fall down and get replaced with steel frame sheds or with long piles of round bales under big tarps: there's not the money in raising most crops anymore to put out the time and money good buildings take.
We were not farming this parcel when the barn came down (when I was ten), beyond feeding up a dozen or so Holstein replacement heifers: that was when Dad was working as a union carpenter. There was no well here then anyway, we had to haul water or use the neighbor's trough. When we lost use of the old dairy barn Dad was already dead, we switched to putting all our hay at the BIL's family place, and there was nobody to push through a replacement anyway.
This isn't a sob story, I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm mostly pointing out a situation which gets repeated on small farms all over western Washington and Oregon. I know other beef people who have lost all their barns to floods along the Chehalis, replaced them with a loafing shed and piles of tarp-covered round bales, and kept farming, and I know people who have lost everything they owned to the real-estate developers because they got hung up on keeping buildings, including homestead houses that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs and reroofing and rewiring and replumbing, drip drip drip wears away the stone. I have friends who have half a million dollars in cash flow on Farmer's Market operations who live in travel trailers parked inside of steel shop buildings.
It depends on priorities and budget; if your priorities are to keep farming and your budget is such that you have to let barns fall down or you pull them down and sell the barn wood to people who make stuff for eBay, well, you do that. It's got no moral dimension beyond the commitment to a single piece of land or a group of neighbors or a way of life.
I think it's better than selling out and losing one of the few open places to more boring pale-grey houses with big complicated roofs and not enough yard too grow a vegetable garden. I know it's better than the great emptiness on both sides of I-90 in Lincoln County Washington, where all the farmsites have been replaced by more wheat, the few yard lights left shining over equipment sheds with no residences nearer them than a mile in any direction. The first time we took my daughter to Missoula I was shocked at the difference everywhere east of Moses Lake, houses which were landmarks to me when I was at WSU gone completely, farmsteads of house and barn and shop and sheds and windbreak replaced with ploughed ground.
We've been here since before 1900. We are still here now. These are the buildings we have right now- things may change. They've changed before, they will change again.
Hey, no problem. Don't sell wood on ebay and not talking about 'moral dimension', just was curious about animal housing. Nice you are committed to your land. Your situation is so depressing to me it makes mine look like a piece of cake. I guess I have lots to be thankful for! Hope your Thanksgiving is full of thanks too!
