This photo is taken from the main parking area of the farm, just to the side of the house. This is a view I had nearly ever day for the first 12 years of my puff.
Notice there are 3 Telephone poles in this photo, between the middle one and the one on the right in the photo there used to be an extremely well worn path where I used to walk when I had some urgent business to attend to in the north western portion of the farm. The trail was even more pronounced by my extreme love of driving our 4 wheel ATV up the same path.
To me it's eye opening that there is no evidence whatsoever of my path. We left the farm in 1991, or 1992. Footprints don't all last 15 years.
This used to be building, with four walls and roof. It was corrugated tin like you see in the remaining sections of the wall. We called it "the machine shed". Sounds like an industrial metal band to me now, but it had been called that because it was were we parked farm machines. A quick inventory of the machines in my mind proves how sadly I don't remember some aspects of farm life. I recall a small white david brown tractor calling the machine shed home during the latter part of my life there, in addition there used to be a hay baler parked there, which is what you see parked there now, in this photo. Ours however was yellow. I remember there used to be an unplugged deep freezer in this building, that had a very horrid smell to it, that I would like to open just to smell how bad that smell was. Later the deep freeze played home to two very large bags of grass seed, which I believe was grass left over from one of the first years my dad entered acreage into the CRP. (on day I might try and touch more on just how much this government program effected the direction of my family)Another aspect of this building that I was always fascinated by was the texture of the dirt floor. There is something about soil that has clung to the bottom of a tractor and mixed with who knows what else only to fall off at night. It is the softest dirt I've ever encountered. I would sometimes collect portions of the dirt in a bucket or cup, and take it to places on the farm which I thought could benefit from this magical dirt.
A last thought comes to me when I think of this building. Bob white Quail. This is a very memorable bird to me, the dwell on the ground and the live in large groups r "
"coveys". One of these grouped used to live up the hill behind the machine shed. They have a particular instinct to not flush from their cover until a predator is nearly directly upon them. I believe the advantage of surprise in the having 10 to 15 birds suddenly springing to flight from the grass all around while making an odd noise has proven itself useful for this species. It also proved to startle the living shit out of me.
More specific to this memory is the reason they are named Bob White, they male birds call each spring sounds as if they are actually saying "Bob White". I have a memory of walking with my Father and my Sister next to the machine shed and being told about Bob Whites, and why they are called what they are called. I seem to remember my sister making the call sound very funny.
This building is a grainery. In it's day it was used for the storage of grain. I can only recall one occasion where one of the rooms was actually used for the purpose it was intended for while we lived on this farm. The rest of the time the grainery was quite simply the coolest building on our farm. When it was ours, the outside was a visible faded red worn wood, not this childish white sighting which now adorns the exterior you see here. This building was the sight of Darth Vadar's base of operation in my most often re-occurring childhood dream. The one where Darth and his crew come and take over my farm. Nothing upsets a child more then having the dark side take over the farm.
This building was also at times a club house, a boxing club, a dojo and an apartment building. In my imagination of course. It was also the sight of what we mistook for really awesome secret passage ways. They were in fact just conduits for the cycling of grain.
This is the north east corner of the house we lived in. It looks essentially like it did when we lived there, though a bit worse for time. The concrete steps in the center of the photo lead to the backdoor, which was basically the only door we ever used, so really it was our front door.
Though I have no memory of the event, I once fell from the top of these steps and cracked my skull. I was a young one, I think around 2, and a Jehovah's witness out making the testifying rounds of local farms had just pulled down our drive way to annoy my parents before being sent away. I suppose the arrival of a vehicle, not an entirely common occurrence, pulled me onto the porch to see what gave. I was most likely following my mother. The wind picked up after I was on the porch, probably driven in some part by the universe's distaste for followers of ridiculous wet blanket religions, and threw the screen door into me, catapulting me off the porch. This was mother nature's way of setting it clearly to me, early in life that the talk of man is no match for the actions of nature.
This building was our 2 car garage. It also has received a makeover, for what I would call the worse. This building used to be of aged weather faded green wood on the outside. Much more pleasing to the eye. I'm having some memory that the door used to note actually close and lock, until the roof had to be re-done in the style in which it appears now. That happened one summer around the time I and all my siblings fell ill w/ the chicken pox, and were allowed and entire week out of school to play outside and itch.
The roof of this building was the burial spot of Kittie Kiffany, who founded the village who's name I've forgotten. The village began in the sandbox, which we called in a sand pile. Building the village, which was small, approximately 1/32 scale, and creating the lives and drama's of the little people that lived there was a game my siblings and I played called out in the sand pile. The name took on a symbolic meaning when the game out lived and and out grew the sand pile by 100 feet and at least 6 years. I call upon both of my siblings and my mother to blog further on the culture of "out in the sand pile. I should mention that the origins of the game are between the garage and the silver propane tank. (which I almost mistook for the Anhydrous Ammonia Tank which we would rent every year to fertilize with) There is no evidence of the game left. All the people that never lived there don't live there anymore, sad.
Here is yet another view of the back-front porch. Notice the Trees on the left of the picture. This was the home of our rather no nonsense tree house which our father built for us. In thinking about it now, I think that is what became of the original garage door which never closed nor locked. There is no longer any sign of the tree house.
I was once sitting in the yard, about 15 ft from the back-front door, playing in the dirt, which was not of any remarkable texture, when my cat Pirate, who'd been missing for over a month came calmly trotting through the field you can now see in the background of this picture. At this time the field had been plowed under, so it was nothing but dirt and my white and black friend stood out like vision. Where he was for that entire month he wouldn't say, but he made it clear that he came back because he loved me and missed my fellowship.
This pile of stones, was actually some sort of water storage well which we called "The Reservoir". I think this is actually an incorrect usage of this word, but it was Kansas and we did that sort of language vagary often. In considering it now I would love to now who built it. I would love to now how deep it is. Why they put the stones around it and where the stones came from. It really only just now strikes me as striking. It's really a striking feature, and unlike so much else, "The Reservoir" is just like it always was. I can't help but feel that it will remain just like it always was for sometime to come. 
This picture is interesting. Notice the overall distortion of perspective, most obvious near the top of the telephone pole. I like that cell phone camera's do this. I also like that they don't flip images the way all other camera's do, so text appears backwards. I'm a fan of cell phone cameras. I've said that before. I did not have a cell phone when I lived on the farm, that too has changed. My father had a cell phone, possibly towards the end of our time on the farm until it was stolen from the cab of his pickup, which would later be my pick up, in the parking lot of the football stadium where we had parked to see my very first K-state football game. The team my father used to be the mascot of. He talked to the mascot that day, and they had just finally bought a new wildcat head for the poor fool to run around in.
I apologize for running on there. In the foreground of this picture, that tangled mess of plant that you see there is a cactus. It, like "The Reservoir" it sits in front of is amazingly still there. I took a cutting of this cactus, on this trip, and kept it in a Styrofoam container all the way back to Kansas City, where I planted it in a soil/sand mixture, named it spike, and trusted to the care of my mother, who no doubt feels the significance of this plants survival. 
This photo looks north west of "The Reservoir", it looks on what2 of the three tree belts of our farm. The third one was planted later, by my father, in what I can only assume was further participation in a government agriculture program a few years before we moved.
In the tree belt on the left I planted my first garden, in horrid soil with no sunlight. Odd that nothing ever grew. It would have been my secret garden, not it's just my forgotten folly.
In the other tree belt Devin used the remains of the chicken coop we tore down on a whim to build a very nice club house. He should blog about that in further detail. 
This is looking north east of "The Reservoir". That building that you see that's falling in on itself used to be our cattle barn. A bit west of that and tad bit south there is now no evidence of the place where my brother and I once fed bucket calves. Before that my father had pigs there, not even I remember the pigs. 
I really liked growing up on this farm, there is no other spot in the world that I could ever love as much as I love this place. Moving away from this farm was also the single most important factor in my development as a person. My family are all better people for having made this move and been given the opportunity to have experiences that are simply not possible in rural life.
If you trace my steps, they begin here.
