Hazen Audel Instagram – The WEST (the western half of the United States was where the last stands of Native Americans were to be finally relocated to the confines of reservations or to be exterminated). In the mid-late 1800s the US government sent news to all the Middle & Eastern United States and Europe. In pamphlets, flyers and in Newspapers, in enticing Bold letters “INDIAN LAND for Sale!”.
And it was for sale and was also available for free for determined homesteader in 60 acre parcels. Settlers came from across the Atlantic. Immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, England (throughout Europe) and the Eastern & Middle United States went West, hopeful of opportunity, adventure and with pioneering fortitude – a new life.
The Palouse, the region where I am from has the deepest topsoil in the world. Geological events deposited rolling hills of rich soil, that were underneath endless wild grasslands and timbered forests.
Land to be plundered, logged and tilled to oblivion, once it was planted with wheat, barley and oats it proved to be the most productive grain land in the world.
History is horrific and fantastic, making today.
This Barn was a part of American farming history. When I found it the walls had old leather horse collars hung on the walls for the teams of draft horses that originally pulled the plows, to the seeders, to the threshers. Upstairs in the loft was hay piled to the ceiling to feed the horses below during the long winters. A black and White photo of this barn had the date 1896 written on the back of it where it lived in Fairfield WA (Deducting that it was build maybe in the 1890s). This barn was built by neighbors, hand saws, & horses. When I discovered the barn it was slated to be burned to the ground the following Spring, the widow’s farm was being leveled and sold to a predatory local Farmer. With unsympathetic pragmatism the local farmer wanted the barn’s presence to be replaced by 2400 square feet of flat ground and more wheat to accommodate todays mass, large scale, farming methods. The 60 acre parcels that supported families to live off of their own land and made communities have been all bought up & now transformed (read in comments) #barnhouse | Posted on 08/Apr/2024 23:45:56
