Farmsteads Quotes

“During the 20th century, the Forestry Commission (FC) bought land and planted it with commercial forestry crops on a massive scale. In most cases the land was bought from cash-strapped private land-owners who were required, prior to afforestation, to terminate or otherwise end farm tenancies. What is less well known about this period of forestry expansion is that following purchase the FC embarked on an active programme of property ruination, involving the abandonment and deliberate destruction of hundreds of vacated residential properties, mainly farmsteads. The ruins of these farmsteads are still visible in many forests currently managed by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) and act as a poignant symbol of Scotland's clearance legacy.”
― Douglas MacMillan, Reforesting Scotland 71, Spring/Summer 2025

“We drove down the highway, past shabby farmsteads with flaking paintwork and rotting wood, past tumbling-down tobacco barns cut through with shards of sunlight. Past abandoned cars and rusting farm machinery, and black cattle standing in paddocks next to farmhouses. Past towns that seemed half-abandoned, with boarded-up shops and houses with Confederate flags in their windows and 'VOTE TRUMP' signs on the front lawn. Shutters were closed and leaves gathered on the porch; churches with billboards promised redemption for drug addicts. Flakes of snow fell but didn't settle.

Our friend drove us around the country in his white pick-up truch with his sheepdog in the back and hisred toolbox and wrenches in the footwell. He told us about his people, past and present, and introduced us to farmers who were holding on. They all told us the same thing: America had chosen industrial farming and abandoned its small family farms, and this was the result - a landscape and a community that was falling apart. They showed us fields of oilseed rape that were full of weeds because they were now resistant to the herbicides that had been overused. They spoke of mountains ripped open for minerals, and rivers polluted, the farming people leaving the land or holding on in hidden poverty. And the worse it got, the more people seemed to gravitate to charlatans with their grand promises and ready-made scapegoats to focus all their anger on.”
― James Rebanks, Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey