Such a strange fall season. The nights are cool, but the days are still hot. The trees were already turning colors and shedding their leaves in early August due to the heat and aridity. This past Saturday, up north, I took a long walk down the gravel lanes near the house--in the furthest northeast corner of Venango County. Most of the buildings along those roads are old hunting camps, many of which are abandoned, like this one. It makes me sad. I think how I used to long for a little place in the woods, just like this. How can anyone leave it to collapse into its foundation?
Some of the hunting camps are disused farms, or else farms where someone still works the fields, but no one lives on site. This place is cursorily maintained, but it clearly hasn't been anyone's home in a very long time. I was curious about it--so scenic, with such a large farmhouse and barn. It must have been quite prosperous at one time. Of course, many of the farms up here did milk cows on the side, while leases with the oil companies brought in the real money.
Same homestead from a different angle. The world was so woefully dry that day, as if every green thing would crumble to dust and blow away.
I'm not sure I've ever seen such an ungainly farmhouse around here. The general rule--when they were building farmhouses in this region--was to make them as tall as they are wide, but this one never got the memo. The second photo from the top might make a decent painting--if the right artist undertook the task and got it from a slightly further distance, to include more of the surrounding countryside.
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