I’ve been fascinated ever since I can remember by old forgotten homesteads. I grew up on a farm in rural Kentucky spending my summers barefoot with my toes in the dust, wading in the cool waters of the creek and chasing cattle. Long days were spent in the sun baked fields setting tobacco or tossing hay bales on a slowly moving wagon. I remember helping my mother shell peas and snap beans on the porch swing so she could can them. These memories are so dear to me now. I’m older with kids of my own and setting out on a parallel journey to my mother’s. My parents sadly both passed away several years ago and the farm is ours now. We work the earth and hope for rain when the days become long and hot just as they did so many years ago. When I pass an abandoned farm house it pulls me in, I find my mind wandering and picturing how the people that lived there years ago spent their days. I can see them in my mind’s eye doing the same things; shelling peas, snapping beans, sweating under the blazing summer sun in the fields. It always makes me sad to see a once loved old home falling into disrepair. I try to figure how it ended up this way, forgotten and alone with nature reclaiming it. This illustration is based on all those beautiful old homes with their weathered clapboard and sagging roofs. Available as an original in my Etsy shop.
Peanut Butter and Yelly Sandwich 