Today as I was driving to OC from work I noticed an old wire corn crib standing empty on the side of the road. Being a history major, I am drawn to things like this - silent reminders of an era that is no longer here - days when whole cobs of corn would be stored in these bins until the right time.

Abandoned farms serve much the same reminder: the pioneer days are gone. In the place of hard work by hand and communities knitted together by Sunday afternoon potlucks and pitching together to harvest the fields is a mechanized agriculture with little hard work required and no need to even know a neighbor's name.

I don't consider myself a farmer. I am a farmer's daughter, but I have little interest in farming, and want to leave the midwest, even if only for a time. I think it is post-industrial agriculture with which I have the problem though. A world where one is isolated by the farm, living side by side with people one barely even knows, "working" dawn to dusk in a tractor that does all the work.

Beyond the practical considerations of industrialization leaving little room for the small farmers, it's no wonder that abandoned farms dot the landscape - farming isn't what it used to be. I, for one, am disenchanted.