mean fewer farmers
11 Thert ; something sort of sad
f. about a vacant farmhouse. Not
. that a vacant city dwelling is any
ig&feat joy—but in the city, if it’s a
Wcent house, someone will move
,n in shortly. In the country when a
farmhouse stantds empty it means
, a change. A farmer has been
replaced, his land taken'over by
someone else and his house and
perhaps even his farm buildings no
longer needed.
They don’t shoot displaced
farmers and they don’t tear down
their homes right away. No, in
stead it’s a very slow process—
those vancat farm buildings you
see scattered around farm country
have probably been empty a long
time. Slowly they’ve gone through
the transition from the com-
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P.O. Box 56, Ephrata, Pa. 17522 .
Call Collect 717-738-4248 Z
g Name
|£ddress or RD
I Town
J Phone (include area code)
"***""■*■"■ ■■■■■■■■■
Vacant farmhouses
fortable, well-kept farmstead they
once were to the rural ruin they
have become.
The ones that stand empty now
were probably never showplaces,
but they were adequate farm
dwellings in their time. But then
through death or displacement
call it process—that little 80-acre
farm with all its buildings became
part of a larger neighboring farm.
The new owner used the bams and
rented the house for a while. But
that wasn’t very handy and it was
hard to find good renters and the
house was starting to need repair.
So the new owner, who by now
owned 3 or 4 of these small farms,
developed one central farmstead
on his home place. All the others
were left for occasional storage
Call Collect7l7‘73B-4248
.State
Farm
Talk
Jerry Webb
Delaware Extension
County:
Zip
and to whatever fate time, weather
and vandals had in store.
At first it was a broken window,
then some tin blown off the bam
roof. And the paint that was so
badly needed never came. Then
the doors started sagging and the
front proch fell down and one
Halloween some kids set the barn
on fire.
And so it goes. A once proud
farmstead stands in ruin waiting
for the final insult—a bulldozer or
a torch to end its misery.
The heavily populated East has a
minimum of these agricultural
derelicts. There are so many
people who want to live in the
country and who are willing to fix
up or put up with a house in less
than-perfect condition. So a farm
dwelling finds a renter rather
easily and seldom falls into such
disrepair.
But in many parts of this great
country that isn’t the case. When a
farmstead in Kansas is vacated,
chances are pretty good it will stay
that way. Few people want to rent
a home so far from the few cities
that exist out there. The farmer
who now owns that farm doesn’t
need the buildings. He’s probably a
grain farmer who tills hundreds of
acres by himself where once
dozens of people worked. Or the
new owner is a city investor who
owns land and rents it to local
farmers. He may not even know
where the farm is or that a ser
viceable house stands empty. He’s
certainly not going to spend money
on paint and repairs.
During a trip across lowa some
years ago, I was impressed—
maybe saddened is a better word—
POWERS*
RADIALS;
Sow eight ways
and ttwn some!
1 ••due* Km cotfi
2 loott oowtxy hoa*powei
3 CumKoQetim*
4 ff*duc* unn#c«uo*v
•octet wtot
& MVMTm|« CO»TIpOC»KSf*
6 Prefect vfefcft
7 Cm iwpew« co«h
I tfeduccopctotet
toh^n
15.5x38, 6 ply .
16.9x38,6 ply .
16.9x38,8 ply .
18.4x38,8 ply .
20.8x38,8 ply ..
20.8x38,10 ply.
18.4x34,6 ply ..
20.8x34,8 ply ..
24.5x32,10 ply..
5% DISCOUNT
MARCH 16. 1983
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Lancaster & Harrisburg
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by a number of empty farmsteads.
Rolling along endless miles of
countryside with - only an oc
casional village, it wasn’t hard to
understand why the dwellings
stood empty. No one wanted to live
there.
The farm families that built
those places and lived there for
generations are gone. Maybe they
were victims. Maybe they were
winners, but for some good reason
they’re gone. One day they sold
their farms and another day they
auctioned off their livestock and
equipment. Today they’re living in
the suburbs, working in a factory,
or they’re-sitting in an old folks
home remembering the way things
used to be back on the farm.
Agriculture has made
tremendous strides over the past
50 years. Mechanization has
allowed farmers to cover more
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Water
supplies should be adequate to
abundant for much of the West this
summer, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad 1
ministration reported today.
Peter C. Myers, chief of USDA’s
Soil Conservation Service, said the
favorable outlook has been tem
pered somewhat by a lack of
snowfall in some areas.
However, late January storms
along the California coast spread
snow inland as far as Arizona and
New Mexico. Another storm added
significant snowpack in the Pacific
Northwo«* Flsewherp thpre was
*340.00
*465.00
..*500.00
..*600.00
.. *725.00
*830.00
.. *460.00
.. *700.00
*1050.00
SPECIAL
UNTIL
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 5,1983—C3
West gets ample water
9.5x24,4 ply
11.2x24,4 p1y....
11.2x28,4 ply.. ■
11.2x38
12.4x28,4 ply.
12.4x38
13.6x28,6 ply.
13.6x38, 6 ply.
14.9x28,4 ply.
14.9x38.6 ply.
15.5x38,6 ply.
16.9x34.6 ply.
16.9x38,6 ply.
18.4x38,8 ply.
20.8x38.8 ply.
20.8x34.6 ply.
18.4x34,6 ply.
18.4x34 8 ply..
16.9x30,6 ply.
18.4x30,6 ply.
14.9x28,6 ply.
13.6x28,4 ply.
16.9x28,6 ply.
*289.00
*325.00
.. *224.00
.. *262.00
..*173.00
.*140.00
..*220.00
★ Above tires are original equipment
type, Federal Tax is included in
above price.
ground, make more money and
have a better life. But as some
farmers have expanded and
prospered, others have been
squeezed out. Call them war or
phans—the battle is over and they
are no longer farmers. The
precious ground is tilled with great
care and speed and treated with
the best of pesticides and fertilizer.
But the buildings are unnecessary.
So they stand vacant and crum
bling—sad reminders of a kind of
farming that many of us
remember fondly.
We can’t go back to that era and
we wouldn’t want to. An 80-acre
farm complete with cows to milk
by hand, horses to feed and har
ness, and hot days in a hayloft
holds no fascination for me.
Nonetheless, it saddens me
whenever I see one of those nice
old farmsteads falling down.
little additional snowpack in the
western mountains.
Myers said streamflow forecasts
have been revised downward due
to sparse January snowfall. The
two agencies forecast spring and
summer runoff to be generally 85
to 110 percent of normal. A few
streams in Montana and Colorado
may flow as low as 60 to 70 percent
of normal.
Reservoir storage remains good
to excellent throughout the West
and should be adequate to offset
any shortages in water supply
caused by below normal
streamflow.
CTOR TIRES
MSTROIMG
WE” GOTHE EXTRA MILE
T SELL FOR CASH
. *82.00
*95.00
*113.00
*140.00
*125.00
•165.00
*155.00
*191.15
*158.00
*224.00
*220.72
*250.00
*275.00
*364.12
*495.00
•450.00