Colonel Sanders has left the building

Closing out the year with more abandonment. This time just one location in the next county.

It’s a place that I really should have poked around in more, but was in some kind of stealth mode and I didn’t linger long. More’s the pity, but the place isn’t too far away from the house and I can always hit it in the spring if I want. It’s a defunct fur ranch. The mink were housed in these long buildings totaling hundreds of cages.

At first the chicken post confused me, then I realized what was really farmed here. Mink and fox from the looks of it. And it was big. Covering several dozen acres, but as I said, I didn’t really worm my way into it as much as I should have. I’m weirdly nervous when walking abandoned property even if there are no signs telling me not to. Shrug. I’m a weirdo.

The trees in the background of the first photo above are the same ones to the left in this shot –

These little coops or whatever seem to have been built more insubstantially since they are way more ruined than the others. And they’re right behind the remains of the farmhouse. OMG. Talk about noisy and smelly. Yuk.

I grew up with neighbors who kept some chickens. Not many, maybe a dozen or two, but when the wind blew our way the smell was intense. And that was just a few birds!! I don’t know how many they lost to raccoons, raptors, foxes or weasels, but this farm must have been an irresistible lure to those guys when it was operating. I bet the farmer was a serious trapper, too.

There was all kinds of junk down the rows that I didn’t really explore much, but should have like I said. But I was a little cold and, as I said, unaccountably nervous.

I parked on what must have been the main driveway to the residence. Weedy, but still doable.

As you can see, I was fooling around with processing techniques for this set. I usually don’t do this with one location or subject, but for some reason I did this time. These next three are all done similarly though.

That’s as far as I went with the house. I could smell it long before I got under the trees and next to it. Amazing how rot and decay signal their advance. I wish the house wasn’t in such a dilapidated state, but once a roof goes, the floor is too risky for me.

Across the driveway from the house was this poor little building.

I wonder how long that bendy wall will last. We’ve had a couple feet of snow as of this writing and so it might be in worse shape already.

There is another sort of driveway just behind that little shack, but it was really overgrown on the roadside and I didn’t see where or even if it led out to the road. Looks still used though, as did the one by the chicken post. On one side was this fence with kennels for what must have been foxes. It was kind of hard to photograph, but maybe when I go back I can find a tear in the fencing.

So that’s it. Another abandoned farm and even though I think fur ranching has a higher cruelty quotient than some food farming, I’m still conflicted about it. At least furs are biodegradable and not made from plastic or industrial chemicals that poison the earth. But the remains are interesting and make for some good pictures.