What was it like to grow up on a 400 acre farm in Wilson County, Kansas? This excellent story will give you an idea and perhaps bring up some warming memories of your own.


When you live on a 400 acre farm, you entertain yourself as a child – such as playing cowboys and Indians in the timber, shooting your BB gun at frogs at the ponds, playing basketball in an empty hay mow of a huge red barn, and fishing for bass and bluegill. We worked hard at putting up prarie hay and alfalfa during the summer, so we could feed the cattle during the winter. As we looked skyward during the cold dark nights feeding the cattle, the stars were so very bright and vivid. The coyotes howled as they stared at us from the edge of the “crick”. The school bus would pick us up and drop us off at the end of the driveway, which was 1/3 of a mile long. We literally walked in all types of weather, rain, snow and ice to get to the school bus. It was then an hour ride to school on the washboard rural KS roads. In the summer we would pick wild blackberries for pie and wild sandplums to make the best jelly. Time marches on, but the memories that this homestead provides to me, continue to inspire me today.
-Allen Wolf

If you missed the series introduction, you can read it here.

Burley tobacco is placed on sticks to wilt after cutting, before it is taken into the brn for drying and curing, on the Russell Spears’ farm, vicinity of Lexington, KY.

Photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Tobacco is an elemental part of American history. Within five years of the founding of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first white settlers were growing tobacco as a cash crop, and it was the economic foundation for how they survived. George Washington grew and sold tobacco. Or to be more precise, the workers in his fields grew tobacco. And thus it has ever been through the whole winding course of American history: slaves, migrants, poor dirt farmers, small-plot landowners, and others have worked the fields to grow this plant and turn it into money. This picture depicts a sight you can see anywhere tobacco is grown: tobacco farmers and workers taking advantage of any available ground — a small patch adjacent to a healthy stand of corn, as is shown here, or untillable land on an awkward rocky slope — and working it to yield this sturdy, reliable cash crop. Here, you see the oversized, beautiful, fragrant tobacco leaves, so full of the promise of cash. And so full of illness.

Welcome back to another Mystery Monday contest! Every Monday, we’re going to post a photo from our collection and invite anyone to guess its location. The first person to correctly identify the location will win a prize. To start the year, we’ll be offering the winner a $50 discount to any framed photograph in our collection.
By the way, last week’s Mystery Monday contest was revealed! Check the comments for the location by clicking here.

This video features stunt pilot, Kyle Franklin, performing his famous “Ben Whabnaski Comedy Act.” Would you ride in a plane with him?

If you missed the series introduction, you can read it here.

Bill Stagg, homesteader, in front of his barn, Pie Town, New Mexico.

Photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Look at this picture – look at it quickly, without reading anything – and then guess the year it was taken. You could guess any year in the last hundred or so, and (allowing for colorization) you’d have an equal chance of being right. And the same is true of the place – take away the mountains in the far distance, and this could be almost anywhere. Since the year the first wood-sided barn was built, all over the country, barns have been slumping and sliding into the landscape, nearly but never quite falling down. And the owners have been standing outside them, horses in hand, proud as can be. This is my land; these are my horses; this is my barn.