Sometimes at these old farms that aren’t farms anymore you can still picture the woman with her flowered apron and a child on her hip as she hangs the wash, a man and his older son on a misty morning preparing the horses for a long day of ploughing, or the whole family in their best clothes getting into the carriage (or the sleigh!) on Sunday morning to go to church. A dog barking and wagging its tail as the children play with her, the first tractor and saying goodbye to the horses, the first exciting automobile, the day the phone was first wired into the wall and they called Grandma, the generations, the loving care of the buildings, the big family gardens, the crops, and the prayers for rain. And maybe the person who lived their whole life here, lying in bed as their soul rises one more time to look at this place and remember all of the joy and weeping, and days of work before it leaves forever. All the lives lived here in times we can barely imagine, and before that the great forest and the original people. And here we are still standing on the same earth. Amazing.
