I passed this old farm as we drove south on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Floyd to Boone. I nestled down a bit off the road behind a line of round hay bales. Just enough of a glimpse out of the passenger side window to force me to turn around and drive back for a closer look.

The house was beside a number of barns and other outbuildings, but it was the house itself that drew my lens first. Sitting down the hill, porch facing south but shaded still even this late in the turn of the seasons. The leaves over the eastern porch have all fallen. If this was my home, I would imagine this porch shaded the kitchen door and window. Morning being greeted with the rising sun and a cup of coffee on the porch before chores…

Sometimes as you pass these old homesteads you wonder about the families who sheltered here, through the decades, as this old house lived as a home. You feel the sadness now, as what was once a home becomes something less, something holding not much more than a few memories, if that, in the minds of those who call these pastures and woods home still…How many generations lived out their lives in this old home? Where do their descendants call home now? Just down the road or across the country?