Sweet Brownie Queen: Baney Farm Project

A few years ago my mom showed me the documents from my grandparent's farm. On that visit home I was going through all my things that were stored in the basement and I found drawings of my grandparents house and barn that I did in college. That got my creative wheels spinning.

Many of the papers are ancient and so fragile. We scanned all the papers and had them printed as photos. The survey is dated 1847 and mentions 1762; this is my favorite because the handwriting is so beautiful. The album includes an aerial photo of the farm, the survey, deeds going back to 1806, mortgages, photos I had taken as a teenager, and drawings I did my freshman year of college. Some of the papers are repeated, with sections blown up so they can be read.

I had the sketches copied and reduced so they would fit in the album. They bring back so many memories. My first year of college was very close to my grandparent's home. Several times my grandma would pick me up at my dorm and take me home with her. I would do my laundry and work on my drawing assignments for Art 101, they would feed me real food and then my grandfather would take me back to campus.

The house and barn no longer exist, so I wanted to put all this together to document the farm the way we all remember it. I made albums for my mom and my aunt for Christmas. I am still in the process of putting one together for myself. It was fun to look at all the old documents and the way things were worded. It was a history lesson on several levels. It just seemed that it would be nice to have everything together, in a way that it could be looked at any time.

I was very excited about how it turned out and it brought tears to a few eyes, so I think it was a success!