Sad, sad, sad

No not me, but about what I'm going to show you. My father-in-law grew up in a small farming town in southern Michigan. He lived out in the country, about two miles from his grandparents, who owned a beautiful fruit farm. Grandma and Grandpa Nightliner bought the farm in 1917. They have since passed on, and Grandma sold the farm to a young couple back in 1988. Twenty years ago. We have driven by many times over the years, and watched it go from an old house that was totally fixable, (maybe a new roof at the time and a few TLC cosmetic things) to this today.
Very, very sad indeed. This fall, before our son left for the sandbox, and gets married, by DH decided to take the whole family, including his folks, and visit the farm his dad grew up on (sorry don't have the pics for that yet ). Anyway, on a beautiful day this past fall, we got permission from the new owners, and went and walked the entire property. It was very fun to hear George tell of old stories, where the pigs used to be, where they got in trouble for this and that (there was a lot of that, with 4 boys :). Then on a whim, we drove the couple miles to this farm. There happened to be someone there, doing a few things. We stopped, Jeff explained who we were, and then we got permission to look around.
Unfortunately, because of all the overgrowth, we couldn't go very far into the orchards, but if you looked close, you could tell the different kinds of fruits that they had... cherries, peaches, apples, plums. THe raspberries were long buried by brush. Unfortunatley, the house didn't fair well either. Not sure why someone would buy a house, property, and then for twenty years do nothing. As you can see from these pictures the house was now in disrepair We just found out that it was torn down by the township in December of 2008. The barn and the help houses are in better shape. The side of the house that is collapsing the most, used to be the dining room, and the kitchen was in the back.. They even fought the tearing down of the house, saying that they were going to do something with it. Hadn't done anything for 20 years, why now. I simply don't understand that. Jeff and I almost wish we would have bought it, but you can't go back can you??
Did take this sweet picture of all my kids in the huge, and I mean huge tree in the side yard.
All 3 of the big trees look like this, and Jeff said its because Grandma never let Grandpa trim them. She knew she wanted big, beautiful trees. We were glad we had the time to spend even a few hours there and that we got some nice pictures. Truely the end of an era. Sad.....