100% Michigan Grown Staple Crop Seeds that Empower Your Plant-based Lifestyle Goals

around-our-homestead

Where have all the gardens gone?

Scott Hucker

During this past winter, I was looking online to try and find aerial photos of our farm from before we bought it in 1994.  I came across Vintage Aerial.  I could never find my place, but I have hope, they have many rolls posted that are not finished being indexed.

I did find the 1963 series fascinating as I flew up and down the roads in my part of the county. The rolls included house after house along the path the airplane flew.  I switched to Google Earth, sure enough there was a difference.  

Here is a particularly interesting set of 8 houses in a row:

See it?

Let me help:

Gardens!   8 of 9 houses in a row have huge gardens.   Of course I've no way to measure them, only compare to the size of things in the pictures like house and barns.

Older looking houses have them:

New looking for 1963 do too:

Surely these 8 neighbors don't all grow and sell at the nearest farmers market.

I'm fond of this one:

Clothes line for scale, half a dozen bee hives, fenced in chicken coup and 3 gardens in different parts of the yard perhaps for isolation when saving seeds?  That's why you'll find 3 different plots on our farm, and corn in each of them, just like this photo.  

These are gardens far larger than most mentioned on the internet in 2021 as 'survival for family of 4' yet smaller than my 'full on, grow everything estimate here.'  I think I waited too long to ask what they were growing and why?

Scott

PS here are my 1983 4-H gardens where I grew up.

 

 

 


Older Post Newer Post


1 comment

  • This was a very fascinating post! With the convenience of the grocery store people must have stopped. It would be wonderful to chat with some of those 1963 homeowners! Thank you for observing and sharing this tidbit of history!

    Ramie

Leave a Comment

Please note, comments must be approved before they are published