Saturday 11 April 2009

The Farm (Minto/Normanby township line), Apr. 2009

Home. c. 1970. Almost 100% likely a photo by my mom.
The mixed rail/slat fence didn't last too long.



Almost all of the photos below show the property I grew up on, which for convenience I call 'the farm', until I was 12 (1970-1982).
The pictures below were taken about 40 years after the one above.



This is the house, viewed from the end of the driveway. Everything's changed a lot since the late 1970s/early 1980s.



This is the view from the road, to the east of the house. What we used to call 'the garden'... and where I used to play a form of golf (we only had a driving iron and a putter, and half the field was plowed, so it was kind of an all or nothing thing).



This is the road heading north, towards Clifford. The knoll just ahead used to be bigger, and was a bit treacherous when cars would come rocketing up out of the swamp and think they were home-free, particularly as we were walking home from the school-bus, which stopped down about where the clump of trees is on the left side of the road.



This is the field directly across from the house. We were regularly amazed by how far we could see.



This is the field directly across from the house, just to the right of the picture above.





The two shots above are the road heading south, down into the swamp, and even a little further, to 'the river' (see below).



All right, I was getting all arty. If you look carefully, you can see migrating birds in the sky. I was remembering how big the sky seemed when I was a little kid, and amazed by how far we could see, and wander without anyone really being too alarmed that we'd be snatched by perverts in a van or something. The shot is taken of the gap between where Stroeders and the Augers used to live (the Augers' farm is on the bottom far right).



All right. This isn't 'the farm' proper, but 'the river' (looking north from the bridge), which when I was kid, almost loomed larger as a place of significance. My siblings might understand, or perhaps other people who grew up in the country. I'm sure few others would