Oddly enough it's work that reminds me daily of the changing of the guard. When I started I was number 300 something on the seniority list. I'm now #4, so the number of folks who shared the characters and adventures here with me has dwindled significantly.
That's about how it feels in the farming community where we live -- there's been a steady decline in the number of older members of our community. Most of the surrounding farms have been passed along through several generations of descendants of settlers who cleared the land sometime around the 1850s. Since the 1980s, the children of the "last generation" have dispersed to work in cities across the country and elsewhere. Those left on the farms have gradually died off over the past 25 years. Through the 1980s and 90s, many of the farms have been operated by cash-croppers or nursery sod operators who leased the properties. During this time, the old wooden barns have only rarely been maintained and some of the houses have burned down or been knocked down and replaced with new structures. Now, the city is encroaching on this area and, one by one, the farms are being sold off and most are turned into subdivisions. As the older people die or move into senior's housing, their belongings are auctioned off to city people who are eager to buy up their old tools and bits of equipment as decorations for their homes. Sometimes it all seems a bit too odd. Makes you begin to feel like a real old-timer when you're one of the only "original" residents in the area who knows the history of the families who once lived all around you. Of course, this is happening in farming communities across North America, so our situation is certainly not unique, but it does feel very odd and signals the end of a way of life which will never exist again. |
