spent stalks and old leather

Soy and corn... however we feel about this Wisconsin farmland staple, it sure makes for pretty fall colors.





Old barns, old farmsteads. Think of it: there was once a family farm – maybe owned by the Larsons, and then there was another – call it that of the Lalors. And they flourished and they prospered and before you know it, all land around you belonged to the Larsons or the Lalors.

What do I know about it? No, nothing at all. Just this much: one Lalor family member lived in an old house until she was in her nineties... Here, she lived, so far as I know, alone, here:





(Though her nephew lived just across the road. A Lalor in the land of Larsons.)

She died some half dozen years ago, but the house still stands, as does the barn.





With everything inside as you would imagine it must have been at the time that they raised cattle and kept horses.
















That was a long long time ago. You can tell just fingering the bits and pieces of old leather...





These are the folks that are (more or less) Ed’s neighbors. Within a stone’s throw of his farmette (where the barn is still standing though just barely).

In the Lalor barn, there are old corn cobs left from when animals dumped them on the wooden planks. And shit. There’s badger shit. Or some such animal droppings.

Surely many Wisconsin animals have made homes of the old barns that offer nothing more beyond shelter for the truly needy.



Nearly evening. I drive past a prairie field of gold and purple. Interspersed with spent stalks of something once beautiful but now so very close to moribund.