The Charms of Farm Life
Many a postcard shows the beauty of the farm
The bucolic scenes of a field full of grain, or an old weathered barn can be a relaxing respite from the ravages of the times upon us. Combine that with the tools of farming, ancient and modern, and you have quite a nice topic for a postcard collection. Sometimes buildings look farmy even when they are just sheds behind the house. That may be the case with our first feature, a highly decorative building in Cranford NJ, which may serve now as a garage. Some of these buildings may have at one time been carriage houses, a place to keep horses overnight or to park the surrey. This one almost looks like a barn, but it's not.
If Zazzle should send me a penny or two when someone buys something I have carefully chosen to display on this blog, the price stays the same. The card costs nothing extra. For the reader, my quest to find and post some nice cards in which you might be interested, adds nothing to the cost.
Farm equipment can be fascinating and quite photogenic, such as this hand operated Amish corn cutter left in the field. Looks like a lot of work and the operator surely would be sitting in the hot late summer sun for hours to get the job done.
Vintage art on postcards is often reminiscent of farms or farming. Here a young lad wearing blue jeans, a red vest and a wide brimmed sunhat is doing his best to carry an ear of corn three times his size. Reminds me of when I asked my two year old grandson to pick me up and he actually tried it! This would be a nice postcard to send at Thanksgiving.
Windmills dotted the west many years ago, bringing water to the surface to help keep those corn crops from drying out in the heavy prairie winds. Now we have armies of the things which were once a picturesque and infrequent punctuation of the landscape. Seen here with corn, birds, a fence and a lowering sun, this windmill towers over a beautiful farm.
I have been surprised to find in my internet travels that some people don't want black and white postcards. Many other people do. And it's no wonder, as a simplified image can make a striking statement. This tractor, is reduced to its basic essential lines, would be good for collectors of postcards featuring the working woman, in addition to those who collect postcards featuring silhouettes and farming.
There is no better subject for landscape painting than a bucolic farm in the autumn season. This beautiful watercolor painting of the North Carolina piedmont in the fall, comes complete with a white barn, or is that a corn crib? To complete the look, we have some leaning spruce trees and a wobbly old fence. As structures age, they take on a more weathered, organic look. Maybe this is why we can feel so at home with these soothing images.
A barn itself can be a work of art. Unlike the pole buildings so common in the countryside today, these historic structures were frequently built with an eye for scale and balance. And they are so often red! I wonder why barns are not baby blue, or green or navy. When I take a ride on country roads, the predominant color of the old barns I see is red. This one made a great subject for the artist who found it so alluring. Tim O'toole is an Ohio born plein air painter inspired by Claude Monet. His work is Contemporary Impressionism.
Lying around in the hayloft chatting with friends looks like such a relaxing way to spend a day on summer vacation, or more likely, in the case of this vintage farming postcard, after some of the neverending farm chores are done.
The details of a farm scene are golden. Photographers love to roam a farm, pointing the lens at the pieces of a old building, the doors, the windows, the parts of machines, and the textures. The seed heads of this wheat in the setting sun are on fire with beauty.
But not all the vegetation that grows on a farm is wanted! Farmers need to do a lot to combat weeds, sometimes by smothering weeds with woodchips, and sometimes with chemical help. In the case of smaller fields of vegetables, a good bit of hand weeding may be required. I don't live on a farm, but I have this problem myself and you are definitely invited to my weeding!
How can you make a relic of an old western barn seem even more rustic? Display it on panels of weathered wood. That technique is used here to complete a lovely countryside scene of a wheat field, a red bard a fence, and a textured sky.
This farm postcard shows a wheelbarrow left out next to the clapboard exterior wall of an old farm building in monochrome tones, the hallmarks of an old farmstead.
On this Iowa country postcard, we see a slightly more modern farm complete with silos for grain storage. But still we have what color on the barn? Red. And what is the crop? Corn. A working farm can be quite a collection of buildings serving various purposes. I count seven, though I am sure I am missing some.
Here's a lovely farm watercolor by Sharon Sharpe. Misty skies over wavy fields of grain at the end of the growing season. I have zeroed in on a part of the original card to make what you see here. There is a beautiful Appaloosa horse in the other part of the scene. Because it's Zazzle, you can very often go into the design tool and maximize the part of the art that you want to buy on your postcard. That's the beauty of a POD Postcard! Maybe there will be another blog post coming soon, all about Farm Animals on Postcards, and you may just find the Appaloosa over there when it appears. Subscribe so you don't miss it.
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