Janesville Photographer | Barns and Farms

Dairy Barn

This a bit of shift from the "People photography" that I normally do but this is another area that I am interested in: old barns and abandoned buildings. I grew up working on small farms and I love to capture images of small dairy farms whenever possible. Obviously, this image shows an old dairy barn that is no longer in use. 

Vines are now starting to take over where a family, somewhere in the distant past, made a living raising and milking cows here. Several of the stalls are missing the stanchions. The gutters behind the stalls aren't even equipped with gutter cleaners! The old, manual gutter cleaning system consists of a track with a bucket on it. The track is still visible in this image in the upper left hand corner. At the back of the photograph are a couple of calf pens. Not seen in this image is the silo end of the barn where the farmer would store silage. 

The image below is an image of the single silo at the end of this barn taken from the interior, looking up.

Janesville Photographer | Silo

Obviously, I not only hold fond memories of farming but also an appreciation of the role agriculture plays here in Rock County and Wisconsin--in history and in the present. I am excited to announce that I will be the official "Breadbasket: Seed to Spoon" photographer for the Rock County Historical Society over the next year. The Breadbasket project is a historical look at agriculture in Rock County. Here is a link to the Rock County Historical Society's post on the topic: http://www.rchs.us/breadbasket-seed-to-spoon/. 

In additional to taking photographs a these events, I will be working working with my video partner, KeyFramesVideo, to produce a promotional video for the Lincoln 5K run on 6/15 and the paranormal investigations coming up this fall. I am pretty excited to work with an organization dedicated to preserving our memories. 

By the way: I am always looking for old barns to photograph. If you know of any (and can get permission), please let me know by emailing [email protected]. 

--jay