Doris

Doris is not very well. She is being looked after with a few other of the farm animals who are feeling a bit poorly. The bell is round her neck because she is blind and in case she tries to wander off and she's in a large pen along with a cow, 2 goats and several chickens. They are all on strict diets and have bells round their necks { Not the chickens obviously ... if you've ever tried to put a bell round a chicken's neck then you'll know why they are bell-less }.

Although it was beautiful day with the temperature creeping over 100ºF the farm shop was very empty compared to how it should be this time of year. The weather has been at the root cause of this with very little corn , tomatoes , peppers and assorted veggies. Even the famous New Jersey white peaches are few in number and about 3 times the price of previous years.

Pick your own has been cancelled because there is just not enough fruit on the trees.
The apple crop seems that it will be well below the normal crop size.

What is even more depressing is that as we drove through the valley we saw that most of the last remaining farms are for sale. At least 5 farms totaling close to 1000 acres of arable land. The large horse farm was also looking very silent.
The sight of several of the farm workers' homes for sale along the banks of the little river that flows through Long Valley was quite distressing.

In another 10 years all of this beauty will be one housing development after another ......

Just another day in vanishing America. Perhaps I've found a mission. Traveling around photographing this vanishing heritage of ours. Not the monuments , famous buildings , covered bridges and mansions which are well documented but the everyday sights of old farms , outbuildings and farm machinery, old factories and abandoned homes , schools and churches. The rapidly vanishing road side fruit stands , the ice cream parlors , the shoe-menders, the butchers, bakers and artisan made products.

I have taken a few lines from a Bob Dylan song that just happened to be on the radio ( and radios are a dying breed to ! )


There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
And the bankers are takin' my home and my land from me
There's a big achin' hole in my chest now where my heart was
And a hole in the sky where God used to be

There's a home place under fire tonight in the Heartland
There's a well with water so bitter nobody can drink
Don't they know that I'm dyin', Why nobody cryin' for me?

My American dream
Fell apart at the seams.
You tell me what it means,
You tell me what it means.


On the other hand

Somewhere over the rainbow way up high
In the land that I heard of once once in a lullaby
Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true



douglas
ps If you read this to the very end I'll send you a full size file of a photograph from my personal Vanishing America series that one day might one get published.