stompybritches
New member
Sadly, my native home state of Oregon has seen too much of just that. Outsiders who move in, bulldoze a farm house/ranch house and build that large footprint mansion they so desperately feel they need. Drives rural land prices up and sooner or later the high and mighty insert themselves into local politics and boards with resultant negative changes to entire communities (Salem political bias against farmers and ranchers aside). Once the Cali or otherwise train pulls in, others follow. Bye bye rural Oregon. You'll be hard pressed to find decent acreage 10+ with an honest to goodness real old farmhouse on it. Most have been scraped, and it's a dam shame.
Let me share some of what is so valuable about these "tiny, falling apart" old farm houses. They are anchors in rural communities. They tell the stories of entire generations of hardworking people, they tell the stories of entire casts of characters from days gone by. Most homesteads are forever etched into one oldtimer family last name to easily get across location, even for for a 911 call. Community. History.
My own home started out as a rail depot and post office (current living room) and was added on to by the deceased parents of my neighbor who lived in the home for a time as a kid.
My postal carrier's grandfather told her stories of how there had been an old stagecoach stop and inn here before the rails and depot came in, and before that, there had been a communal well (now under gravel on a county lot adjacent) where pioneers stopped to water their oxen, horses, livestock. I've got several 'pioneer' juniper trees am positive were used for shade during the Oregon Trail days. Later, sheepherders on horseback would use the well to water the herds. When the rails came there were chutes and shipping yards that were just down the road from my house.
During the postal era there was a turnstile before the railroad tracks across the road and a platform with a hook for the mail bags. All gone now of course. They'd load and unload supplies, kerosene etc, store things here in my 'living room'. Mule teams would jingle up and down the canyon going towards the Columbia river and town with wheat and return with supplies.
The cast of characters in my home were varied. A strapping giant Ferrier with black hair and black eyes, described to me by my nonagenarian neighbor to my North as a "fiery sumbitch" from memories of when he was just a kid, another was a local infamous bronc rider, and the list goes on. I've found old stopper bottles, an old leather mule or horse collar amazingly preserved here in the desert climate, various old stove parts, arrowheads, very old buckles and tack hardware, square head nails, lots of interesting odds and ends.
One of the elms in the front yard (that sadly needed taken down) had been planted by my neighbor's dad when that dad was just a teenager. Way over 100 years old. I thought long about taking that tree down and apprised the family of why it needed done, but I was sorry to see it come down, as were they. His father had found a civil war era breechloader rifle hidden in the walls when he went to install insulation in the original depot walls. Quite a find. He added the current 3 bedrooms and bathroom in the 50's, the original outhouse was alongside the barn, the old well and hand pump was off from the house at the old pioneer days well site. These people worked hard under tough conditions here, hard to imagine going out in 0 degree weather with a 40mph wind blowing but dang.
The kitchen has all the original farm cabinets with solid thick hardwood doors. Sturdy yet simple, and tall. On the back side of the kitchen is the old canning closet, rows of many shelves to hold canned goods from garden harvest. The 'septic' consists of dry well pits (which the 'green' crowd are now crowing about) for kitchen and wash water, along with another system that heads out carrying the bath water which supplies water for the huge old Ash tree. The black water sewage goes to two tanks with another eventual 'evaporator box' (enclosed) and this setup has also become the darling of the 'green' crowd that are so 'ahead of the curve'
. This is rural living and it works.There are some very old corral fence boards made from 30 foot long lumber - I kid you not - hard to pound a nail into them as is most of the thick dense wood used inside the home. Trim boards are bird's eye maple with custom closets (that means real home carpentry), and every board and nail holds a story. I wouldn't trade this house for a freaking modern stick-built or otherwise. I'm proud to own and maintain one of these "nothing worth much in them" old homes, and you can dam well bet if I get so old I can't keep up with the property that I'm not selling to an outsider, nor anyone who would bulldoze this place, there's plenty of land out back zoned for a new home with a new road cut in if they so choose. You have no idea how many people were relieved that the 'someone' who bought the place was a person who cares about not only the house, the land, but also the context of community and history. We're losing not only oral and written local history but local landmarks and the stories of the people who lived and worked in those homes. Case in point, a local eatery my own mother frequented as a teenager way back in the 40's. Torn down, fabulous neon sign and all, and for what - another gas station in a tiny town that already has three
