testament

All that's left of this farm are two silos, standing strong and straight like the tombstones at old Kings Cemetery. They are gigantic testaments to the fact that a living, working farm once stood on this spot. Everything else is gone except for a pitifully decaying farmhouse just to the north of this location.

The huge barn is gone, as is the windmill, pump house, corn cribs and chicken coop.

This image represents the importance of work done by Garfield Farm and Inn Museum, The Homeplace 1850 and others in the business of map making.

Map making, you ask? What does a historic presevation group have to do with map making? Their work is about creating maps - deep maps. I was first introduced to the phrase in William Least Heat-Moon's book, PrairyErth. It refers to mapping a physical place, not only in space but in time. Standing on a spot and building a deep image of how the space was used reaching back in time.

Garfield Farm and others make it easier to construct a deep map. Their work brings this imaginitive process to life. They've done all the research, allowing us to simply enjoy the time travel. Ancient history isn't so ancient, but authentically recreated in the here and now. Living history - history that lives.