Coop's Corner: Good Intentions/Vintage Aerial Photography

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Good Intentions/Vintage Aerial Photography - 2024/02/06

There was no way that I wasn't going to have my Ellsworth Railroad Post complete by now....but it's not. I have been working on it though just in small bursts and a complete Post they do not make. Not only have there been distractions of my own making but also surprises have come along. Mom has been moved to a Memory Care unit and I've been busy getting her former apartment dealt with. Late last week our well went out and that has caused another level of commotion.

Here's the fun part....one of those distractions has been the time I've spent looking through old aerial photographs taken of farms in our neighborhood. As has so often happened with the internets, searching leads to fun (and all too often expensive!) new discoveries. Between my general interest in geography, family history in the area and learning more about the nearby railroads the Vintage Aerial Photography channel was discovered.

I've known for years that firms have made it their business to fly over farms, take photos of each and every farmstead and then return (by automobile) and go door to door selling framed prints. My uncles had numerous shots framed over time so I was familiar with the concept. The Vintage Aerial firm maybe purchased the inventory and have made those old photographs available online?

In our little corner of SE Minnesota, flyover photos were taken in 1967, 1970 and 1981. The farm we live on was in the family for 100 years back in '84, the house burned in '86 and we bought the place in '89. Though I don't have the 8" x 12" photo yet of our place in 1970, I did purchase the older photo from '67.

Other than the house and one 'machine shed', the buildings then matched what we purchased from my mom and her siblings 22 years later. In '67 my grandmother owned the farm, cousins lived there at the time and were renting. It would have been about that time, possibly '66 that our large extended family held their annual 4th of July picnic on the lawn under those large oak trees. I remember it well, Charlie was my brother's and my age, we were playing in the barn and he tore a big gash in his pants that he'd been too excited to change after church.

After the house burned, the parents moved to town, their son added a milk house to the barn and started milking cows. Not long after we moved in, horses goats and a herd of sheep populated the barn. Currently, the only building still standing is the grainery, only the roof peak visible through the trees.

The red path shows the record Aerial has of the flight that day and the places photographed. There are many discrepancies and you can see that they are encouraging accurate updates of locations and descriptions of note. I've been having a lot of fun doing so. By 1970, brother and I were 'scouting' these roads on a SL100 Honda and 125 Yamaha Enduro. The bikes have changed but I'm still running these roads.

Check out www.vintageaerial.com and see if you can help them identify places that YOU know. There was a snafu with my original order and Alexis worked hard to make things right.....they're good people.

This farm is a couple of valley's away from us, the place where mom's uncles (my Great Uncles) farmed for years. I remember family gatherings here, specifically a Thanksgiving with a very full house of people. One of these little buildings is still standing, the rest are gone. The house survived until just a couple of years ago, the fire department used if for practice and the brick chimney stood all alone as a monument for over a year.

The guy cleaning the barnyard on the John Deere is mom's Uncle Johnny, Uncle Herman and Uncle Walter all farmed together.

Just beyond, their John Deere track'd caterpillar. See the '59 Chevy? I was in the barn a couple of times, not to work, only to visit Uncle Henry milking cows. The stave silo stood until a dozen years ago, I never knew the wooden silo.

8 comments:

AnonymousFebruary 6, 2024 at 6:45 PM
Interesting post. Thanks for sharing!
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Mark TomlinsonFebruary 6, 2024 at 7:05 PM
Wow! The ridge on that barn is perfectly straight. I would have thought it was worth preserving. Maybe maintaining those buildings was greater than the revenue brought in by farming. Thanks for sharing these. I’ve torn down my share of suffering wooden farm buildings over the last 50 years.
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motormikeFebruary 6, 2024 at 7:37 PM
Not just farms... A1 Auto Parts St Paul.. had a aerial shot hang'n on the wall.
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AnonymousFebruary 18, 2024 at 2:09 PM
I have two framed shots from Vintage Aerials, both taken on the same day in 1968, of the farms my parents were born and grew up on in SW MN. The two farms are about five miles apart.
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Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)