(wind howling) (snow crunching) (wind howling) (wind howling) (gentle music) (vehicle droning) - [Jim] It's 7:30 on a Saturday morning, and I'm headed north to the town of Sheldon, Vermont, to photograph this little 19th century cow barn, which is all that's left of what was once a thriving rail station and farm complex.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) The original compound was built around 1850 on the old Missisquoi Valley Railroad line.

And from what I've been told, there was a cattle yard and milking barns, a farmhouse and a carriage barn, an inn, and then, of course, the train station itself.

(gentle music continues) (wind whistling) Then in 1910, a spark from a passing train ignited a fire that destroyed all but this one little cow barn.

(pensive music) (wind whistling) (pensive music continues) (wind whistling) (gentle music) (vehicle droning) (upbeat music) My love for the country was kindled early on while visiting my grandmother each summer in the Poconos of Pennsylvania.

(upbeat music continues) (cicadas chirping) Warm afternoons fishing for sunnies in the pond near the one-room schoolhouse that my grandmother attended when she was just a girl.

- She taught me how to fish with a stick and a string, and a bent safety pin tied on the end.

(upbeat music continues) (hooves clattering) Listening for the horses in the distance as we waited for the hay wagon to pull up in front of the lodge that my grandparents owned, my siblings and I sitting on scratchy hay bales as the team slowly pulled us up the road to the top of Sunset Hill, where we'd watch the lightning bugs come alive.

(upbeat music continues) (hooves clattering) Spending endless hours playing in the field behind my grandmother's house, sunup til sundown, dreaming up adventures and letting my imagination run wild.

(grass rustling) (upbeat music continues) The decades passed, and while I got busy raising a family, building a business and making a life, that strong pull of country never left me.

So in 1996, in a leap of faith, we pulled the trigger and moved from suburban Long Island to the beautiful state of Vermont.

Lush green mountains and clear lakes, rolling hills dotted with farms and barns, wide open spaces and a simpler way of life, heaven to a kid from suburbia.

(upbeat music continues) (vehicle droning) (upbeat music) (cows mooing) (bell ringing) Exploring the backroads, I immediately found myself falling in love with all the old barns and photographing them any chance I'd get.

But there was this disturbing trend.

I'd be driving down the same country road I'd driven a dozen times, come upon a pile of rubble and then realize, there used to be a barn there.

Sadly, this was becoming a theme in my travels.

I'd shake my head and wonder, am I the only one who cares about this?

(pensive music) All too often I'd find some beautiful old structure that I'd planned to photograph, but maybe it wasn't the right season or the right light.

So I go back some months, or sometimes even just weeks later, only to find ruin.

(wood snapping) (upbeat music) And when I get to poke around one of these worn out beauties, it's like a treasure hunt as I look for clues.

How many years ago was this built and how was it used?

Who were the people who spent their days here?

And if I close my eyes and take in the smell of old hay, or perhaps that lingering scent of a horse, I can almost hear the lowing of the cows, the sigh of that horse, whispers from the past.

(placid music) There's this sadness I feel not only for yet another piece of American history that gave way to time, but for the people themselves, the people and families who built their lives around these structures, for their hopes, and for their dreams.

(placid music continues) - Whenever we have objects that we can all recognize as being something from grandparents' and great grandparents' generation, it begins to create a kind of visual connective tissue in our minds about what the landscape used to be, what used to be on that corner, what used to be in that field.

And whenever we start that thought process rolling, it leads us to a, you know, a sense of loss, a sense of longing, a sense of interest in what was here.

And it becomes a call to arms.

- [Jim] As I started sharing these images here in Vermont, I began to wonder if there was actually a much bigger picture here.

(gentle music) So starting with the Plains of Montana, I'd set out to discover this for myself, searching for all those iconic rural structures that our country's heritage was built upon, and capture the aging beauty of as many as possible before they completely vanished from the American landscape.

This is how "Varnish" was born.

(dramatic music) If you just pause for a moment and look closely, there is such remarkable beauty in these fading structures.

It's a personality and a character that only comes with the passage of time.

Whether it's the rich patina of a rusted tin roof, (gentle music) peeling paint on faded clapboard, (bright music) the silent gaze of a prairie church long forgotten, the gentle sway of a sagging porch, the muted colors of a weathered slate roof, (bright music continues) the textures and delicate puzzle of a stone foundation, the serenity of a barn sleeping in winter, (bright music continues) the play of light through slats of a tattered roof, (bright music continues) the dry grasses that caress a weary homestead, (bright music continues) or the testaments to faith of past generations.

It's just impossible not to see the beauty, the beauty in decay.

(bright music continues) And as I stand with my camera in countless overgrown fields, I swear I can still see the shadow of the people who built upon the land.

(gentle music) After all, weren't all these structures once a part of someone's dream?

(gentle music continues) - I'm passionate about the preservation of the Glendale farm barns.

When we lived in Scotland, Judy and I would visit stately properties and note that many of them had these purposeless structures.

And they were called follies.

Judy refers to the barns as Jack's follies.

(bright music) (door rattling) So this is the English barn that we were talking about.

And you can see the construction, the joinery that makes it very distinctive as 18th century New England barn.

When we bought the barns, the manure was up to here.

We originally just purchased the house and the carriage barn, which is the first barn in the front.

The other three barns, there are four barns in the complex, the other three barns had been kept with the working agricultural land.

After we had lived here for about 15 years, the barns were no longer in use and they were not in good condition.

And the property line at that point, ran actually right through this structure where I'm sitting.

We were offered the opportunity to purchase the other three barns.

I couldn't imagine them ever having been torn down.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) The state barn grant program began in 1993 and we were one of the first applicants.

And that was based on a study that Tom Visser did, an architectural conservation assessment of the barns.

(bright music continues) (footsteps thumping) - There he is.

Hey there, Tom.

- It's good to see you, Jim.

Jack, wow, sure has been.

When we did this research project, gosh, over 20 years ago here at Glendale Farms, the first strategy was to do what we call a condition assessment of this complex of barns.

The first question was, where is that evidence of active deterioration?

What are the most pressing needs in order to be able to preserve the structures, to maintain their use, even if it's just storage, at as economical manner as possible?

What's amazing, of course, about this is that you were so fortunate that there is that 1870s picture of the barns, and to be able to have that sort of pictorial evidence combined with the physical evidence, and then work with the craftspeople to do the restoration of them, is really something special.

What is so remarkable about what we have here at Glendale Farm today is the work that Jack has done to maintain these buildings over more than two decades.

It's been incremental, it's been step by step.

They're here, they have the patina, they have the character, and they have the integrity.

And this is just an amazing testament to this continued effort to keep what is here, keep it standing.

And it provides not only a sense of place, but it's also a place of meaning for us all.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - Hard for me to know what the future of Glendale Farm will be.

In the best world, it will be taken over by someone who has a similar interest in maintaining, preserving these iconic structures.

I don't know what will happen.

I have my hopes and dreams, but that's all I have.

(gentle music continues) (footsteps thumping) (door rattling) - The project poses some obvious challenges, the first of which is simply finding these structures.

(mug thumping) (keys rattling) Do a search on abandoned structures or old barns, and you won't believe how many you'll find.

And it's mind boggling what can be seen from a satellite 400 miles above the Earth.

(bright music) (vehicle droning) Talking with the locals is a great resource as well.

I've met some of the nicest people in my travels, and once I tell them a bit about the project, they're always willing to help.

I'm hoping you can help me.

I'm looking for, I think they call it the O'Neill Barn.

- Sure.

- The old.

Do you know where that is?

But all this is only the first steps.

It always comes down to boots on the ground, and that means driving, a lot of driving.

- Americans have a somewhat vexed understanding of history in the past.

We have a complicated relationship with the past.

We always like to think we're heading for the frontier, for the next thing.

We're forward leaning.

We sometimes don't want to be defined by our past.

Interesting to me how New England has played such an organizing role in the American imagination.

But then, of course, over time, New England gives way to Middle America.

And then the promised land of, you know, California.

As a nation, we're always heading west.

(adventurous music) - So I've been sitting in this field for the last 2.5 hours or so in Pony, Montana, and just waiting for the light to happen so I can photograph this very cool little stone structure behind me.

I have no idea what it is or what it was used for, but I got permission from the rancher to be on his land.

And after I'm done here, I will go down, knock on his door and see if he can tell me something about it.

So it turns out that this beefy little structure was called a powder house, and was once used to store the dynamite for the nearby gold and silver mines.

(adventurous music continues) Whoa, this is the road less traveled.

Oh, man, look at that house.

(window whooshing) (gentle music) I can't help but think about all the settlers that up and abandoned their homesteads due to drought or local economies going bust, just leaving their home and land along with their debts behind.

(adventurous music) (wind howling) (dog barking) (adventurous music continues) (wind howling) This windstorm blew up out of nowhere, and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees in 10 minutes.

(adventurous music continues) (wind howling) And afterwards, as I spent the two hours getting the sand and grit out of my camera, not to mention my hair and teeth, I had to marvel at how some of these structures have been able to withstand such incredibly harsh conditions for nearly a century.

(adventurous music continues) (cicadas chirping) Now, I consider myself a total Boy Scout when it comes to getting permission to be on someone's land.

But if I can't find anyone to ask and the gate is open, well, then sometimes it's shoot first and ask questions later.

Not always the smartest idea.

(radio chattering) (placid music) Everybody loves roadside tuna.

Oh, yeah, we got our broccoli salad and some kind of, I'll call this mayonnaise salad, but hopefully they'll dress this up, though.

But, oh, boy.

Life on the road by fine dining.

(bright music) (grass rustling) (cicadas chirping) (bright music continues) (footsteps thumping) Oh, man, look at this.

Those grain flumes, cribbed construction.

Two by sixes on the flat.

I can't even imagine the weight of this structure, wow.

I would love to have seen this place in its heyday.

(bright music continues) (birds chirping) (bright music continues) (footsteps thumping) It's been said that the grain elevator is to the farmer as the lighthouse is to the sailor.

But as the 1980s came to a close, these old silos were becoming a thing of the past.

Due to their limited capacity, they were abandoned for larger grain terminals and bigger cities.

The tracks were often pulled up and repurposed, leaving these prairie sentinels as nostalgic landmarks of the generations that came before us.

(crickets chirping) (gentle music) Just four months after my visit here, the late season wildfire decimated the town.

- [Reporter] For close to 100 years, grain elevators and silos served as the skyline for the small Montana community of Denton.

That was until that raging fire swept through the town, burning as many as 26 homes, countless other structures and leaving those picturesque grain elevators in a steaming pile.

(bright music) (thunder rumbling) (hawk squeaking) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (thunder rumbling) - [Jim] I view the project as equal parts art, history, anthropology, and storm chasing.

I'm always chasing the weather.

(lightning striking) (bright music continues) (footsteps thumping) (bright music continues) As I wander the prairie and think about the courage of these early settlers, how can I not think about those who roamed the land before them?

(gentle music) (bright music) (vehicle droning) (train honking) (bright music continues) The town of Kremlin, Montana, population 66, sits along what is known as the High Line, just a stone's throw from the Canadian border.

I had seen some intriguing photos of an abandoned prairie church, but nowhere could I find exactly where it was located.

The only information I had was that it was just north of this little town.

When we arrive in Kremlin, it appears to be all but deserted.

But then I see a woman stepping out of her house.

I stop and ask her if she knows anything at all about the church, and to my amazement, she says, "You know, it just so happens I love photographing old churches and schoolhouses."

Her husband then proceeds to give us country directions, like, "Well, go about four miles that way and you'll see a mailbox on a pole.

You follow that to the rise in the road, and then you'll go about another three miles or so past the dry riverbed.

And then you go a little ways more, and then you make a left."

Back here, she says- - [Passenger] Oh, yeah, this looks better (laughs).

- Yee-haw.

15 miles of dirt road and 30 minutes later, I'm about to give up when.

(bright music) Now that's Providence.

(bright music continues) (vehicle droning) Wow, look at that.

This is just remarkable.

(bright music continues) (crickets chirping) So this is where you gotta watch out for the prairie rattlers.

(crickets chirping) (footsteps thumping) Wow.

(crickets chirping) (footsteps thumping) You can see right from the left, right up to the ridge.

All the plaster is gone.

(crickets chirping) All right, so how in the world am I gonna find out who owns this?

(crickets chirping) (bright music) - When it's all said and done, I'm real grateful.

I've traveled all around the world, and I always was real glad to get back out here, where it was quiet and private.

And I appreciated it maybe a little more as I've gotten older.

Well, my elders arrived here in January of 1910 and my great grandpa was from Michigan, my great grandmother was raised just right out of Geneva, Switzerland, and she had come over with her family to America to go to the World's Fair in Saint Louis.

And he was down there buying cows, and she came up to Michigan with him.

And they got wind of this Homestead Act, come out and homestead, get the land.

And it was advertised that everything was real promising.

That's what was back east and all the railway stations and, you know, to get people to come.

And they bought that, people came.

(gentle music) My great grandpa came on a train by himself with some cows, chickens and a chicken coop.

(gentle music continues) And he set up an army wall tent.

And then my great grandma followed about six months later and got off the train and Gildford and walked out from Gildford out here with the kids and just walked out across the prairie, so and they made a good go of it.

The idea of the church got started with a fella by the name of Jacob Brumbaugh.

I guess he immigrated straight from Germany, took him about two and a half years to build the church, and it was completed in 1918.

There was about 200 original members.

(gentle music continues) Yeah, there was some of these folks, the way I understood it, that walked every Sunday morning for six or seven miles to come to church.

- [Jim] Barn swallows.

- I happened to have the building receipts.

There's three of them from the carpenter who was in charge of building the church here.

And the total bill, minus the returns, was $2,437 for this church building.

And the most astonishing thing of all the items, as I'm familiar with building, is the seven foot two, 3.5 foot wide, solid fir doors, almost two inches thick, with six panels, were $7 apiece, and those doors today are $4-$500 for the same door.

And they got 'em in here.

And yeah, they're seven bucks and I just thought, you know, that's something else, $7 doors.

(book thumping) (pensive music) For the most part, most of this area had vacated in the early '20s because of dry weather.

(pensive music continues) 90% of everybody left by about '22, just soured a lot of people's hopes.

(pensive music continues) See, the last summer service was 1967.

Then the church just sat here, closed up, boarded up till my grandma and grandpa bought the land, and they have owned it for the last 40 years.

The notion of what to do with this church building sure has been talked about by the community over the years, and my mother and aunt own the property, and they've been approached here.

Folks wanted to buy the building and move it.

For whatever reasons, they were going to restore it.

And the notion was that the church needed to stay here because in our faith, the church is the bride of Christ.

So that idea of ever selling the church here was just discounted right away by my kinfolk and the neighbors, that it isn't a thing that's for sale.

(pensive music continues) (thunder rumbling) And it sits here, you know, it has never been hit by lightning and no fires.

That is unusual.

The power company tells me that all the time.

(thunder rumbling) - All right, I got call this.

All right, we are out of here.

- Last winter, my great grandpa's barn finally blew over, and the church didn't.

They clocked the wind at, like, 92 miles an hour.

And that went on for about five hours straight.

And I thought, well, the church isn't gonna make it.

You know, it cleared off, and, you know, the church was standing, and the barn was gone.

(rain splattering) (thunder rumbling) (bright music) My family's involvement here was primarily faith-centered.

- [Jim] So would you say that faith plays a role in your own life?

- Oh, well, yeah, it's huge.

That's of all the trials, and there has been a lot of heartache and sad times and that has what I do, without my faith, I wouldn't be here.

And that's been everything.

Very much so.

(gentle music) (paper rustling) - Now, while I love making art in my studio, I always feel restless knowing that the clock is ticking, that with every passing day, we're losing more and more of these gems.

(pencil scratching) I need to be out there shooting.

(gentle music) With all my work, I've always been drawn to old structures.

(attendees chattering) - I'm often asked, who are the artists that influenced me?

Andrew Wyeth, with the muted tones of his egg tempera and watercolor paintings, Edward Hopper, with his clean, hard shadows and strong geometric shapes, and my dear friend Hale Johnson, with his brooding skies and remarkable detail.

These are my mentors.

My hope is that those who acquire my works will not only be visually moved, but be touched on an even deeper level when reflecting upon the history of these structures and our American heritage.

(attendees chattering) (gentle music continues) I'm an old soul at heart.

Even the camera I use is a vintage 4x5 field camera.

And aside from the quality that this gives me, there's just something about using this time-tested tool to capture the souls of these timeworn buildings that just feels right.

- We're living in a dynamic landscape, and there are buildings that are here for a generation or generations which are no longer here, and provide a sense of the bones in the landscape.

This idea has a kind of ghost like quality.

We know there was a building there, and now it's gone.

We know that there's a building that has a potential to be gone.

It reminds me of the small town that I grew up in.

And people always used to say, "Oh, you make a right turn where the barn used to be."

(gentle music) - [Jim] I had passed this rather unique three story chicken coop many times in my travels.

Its sides were bowing outward, and it had this meandering sway that traveled all along its extended roof line.

I had attempted to photograph it on several occasions, but the conditions were never quite right.

Then, one gray March day, I captured what I thought would be just the first of many images I'd make there.

But when I returned only a few months later, I found it had been deemed a safety hazard, and in the midst of being demolished.

(gentle music continues) - I started working on the farm here when I was 10.

My schedule for the day was when I come home from school, I'd change my clothes and I'd come down to the farm to go to work, picking eggs or shoveling manure.

I worked for my dad all my life, so that's a big plus.

You know, most people don't have that opportunity.

So, you know, I drove around, delivered eggs with him, and he'd say, "Here's the slip."

Go in there, go in the restaurant and bring 'em the eggs."

So we got that in.

But as far as here, this job was just, you know, doing the daily chores of feeding, making sure the birds had water and food and the manure.

My grandfather built the chicken coops in the late '30s, early '40s.

That was the Aaronson farm, that's what it was called.

My grandfather did the hatching operation.

My father took over the business from him, changed it to the table egg business that it is today.

The last birds left this farm in '06.

In the prime of our business, we ran about 15,000.

It was considered pretty good sized.

The reason that we tore that barn down was primarily for safety.

Once the birds left the farm, the barns began to deteriorate over time, and there wasn't any need for me to put money back in to a barn that I wasn't using or couldn't foresee using in the future.

But, the local people, a lot of them want me to save them, and they want me to continue farming and continue it the way it is.

But economically, that's not feasible.

You can't get the help.

They wanted more money than I'm paying myself.

And the other thing is, with all the businesses in town, especially this store next door, it became very difficult to run a farming operation here with the smell and the noise from the neighbors, with the stores and the lights and the birds were free.

So they had what they call hysteria, which they would run to a corner and pile up.

And the buildings are all old and rundown.

The other end of that is the realtors or the developers that come into here and know this property all want a piece of it, or want it all to develop it for their benefit, for whatever it is, whether it's condominiums or a new big store like the one next door.

When the Grand Union was next door, they approached my father with buying this whole place, and he looked at them and said he wasn't interested in filling his suitcase full of money (laughs).

(bright music) The buildings that are remaining, the one we're in, was one of the first ones that were built.

That lumber all came off the hill.

My grandparents owned all the land across the road.

And that was in the early '40s.

The hand cages and the roofs are all made the same time the buildings were.

The windows were there for natural daylight, yes.

All the new chicken coops today are all artificially lit.

(bright music continues) The manure came out the front, lugged the grain in there, fed them by hand.

The waters were on a pipeline system.

But the two structures, that one that was torn down was three story, and this one is three story.

That's the unique part of this farm.

(bright music continues) (vehicle droning) (bright music) (cicadas chirping) (bright music continues) - [Jim] A few summers ago, I happened upon this deserted homestead in Vermont.

From the looks of the barn, I imagine it had been a dairy farm at one time.

These small family farms are sadly becoming a thing of the past.

The simple fact is, either they have to figure out innovative ways to compete with the big guys, or abandon what might have been generations of farming.

Here's a sobering fact.

In 1969, there were over 4,000 dairy farms in the state of Vermont.

Now, just 50 short years later, there are less than 600.

And as the farms decline, the barns and iconic structures that were once their backbone often disappear as well.

(bright music continues) (cicadas chirping) (bright music continues) (cicadas chirping) (upbeat music) Some weeks later, I drive back to the area to see if I can track down someone who might know something about the farm.

I remember passing a small house about a mile down the road.

So I pull up and I knock on the door.

It doesn't appear that anyone is home, but as I'm about to leave, this woman pokes her head out the window and asks, "What do you want?"

I ask her about the old farm down the road and she says, "Oh, you mean the Russian farm?"

"The Russian farm?"

She says she doesn't know much about it, but Farmer Harold probably does.

Back in the car, I follow her very specific directions past the third cow on the left type of thing, (cow mooing) and pull up to this good sized dairy farm.

I'm getting out of my car when this huge John Deere tractor pulls up, a friendly looking guy, must be Harold, climbs down from the cab.

I ask him about the farm, and he gladly shares some memories about what was then known as the Myrick farm.

"What do they call it the Russian farm?"

I ask.

He chuckles and says, "Well, you'll need to talk to old Bob Myrick about that.

He lives in the assisted care residence up north."

By this time it's getting late, but I decide to drive over there anyway.

Hoping I'm in the right place, I make my way to the reception desk and ask the woman if there is, in fact, a Bob Myrick here.

She nods as I give her my schpiel and asks me to wait.

She disappears down the hall and when she returns, she says, "Bob will be happy to chat with you, but you're going to have to wait until 'The Wheel of Fortune' is over."

So after about 15 minutes, I'm escorted back to Bob's room.

I enter and this spry-looking 90-something-year-old greets me cordially, albeit with a bit of caution.

But once I start asking him about the farm and the life he built there, he becomes relaxed and reflective, transported to another time.

(cicadas chirping) - Well, my brother bought the farm for my mother after the death of my father.

My father died in 1950.

And shortly thereafter, my mother moved to Burlington.

- [Mary] But, you know, it's amazing all the work Dad put in this houses so many years ago.

- [Dennis] Yeah, the roof was beautiful, you know, but yeah, probably can't save it.

- [Mary] Do you remember the apple tree that used to be here that we used to climb?

- [Dennis] Yep, yep.

- I remember that we had a large cow barn, we had a sheep shed, we had a granary, a corn crib, an ice house, because we did not have electricity when I was growing up.

(footsteps thumping) (bright music) - The very first original barn was actually torn down, correct?

- Correct.

- Yeah.

And that was rebuilt by Dad and my oldest brothers, Larry, Stan, Dana, and Steve.

And all of the concrete was laid by hand.

There was nothing.

- [Gertrude] Oh yeah.

- [Mary] It was all done by hand.

- [Dennis] All mixed with a mixer.

- All mixed with a mixer and laid by hand.

And that's the way things were done.

It seems like there's something missing on this end of the house because I- - It's a tree, there was a tree right in front of the bush.

- [Mary] We used to have huge snow drifts.

We would build tunnels and stuff, that was really fun.

- [Dennis] Snow would drift up to the second story of our house.

We would jump out the window into the snow drift.

- And I was the fourth child.

We were all a year apart the first four years.

So I had three older brothers.

And the way it was back then was the boys worked on the farm and the girls worked in the house.

- [Dennis] We had to pour this all by hand in the course of a couple weeks, probably.

- [Mary] Whoa.

- One strip a day.

- Wow.

- That's a lot of work.

- Do you remember the horse I used to have back here?

- [Dennis] Caesar?

- [Mary] Yep, yep.

- This is the original barn, obviously I think that Dad built first.

- Yep, yep, so what?

- That's where Sutty the cow, don't you remember her?

- I don't, I don't.

- She loved to be scratched over the neck.

We scratched, she put her head up and didn't matter who it was.

- I just remember that he named cows after us girls.

Some of them- - All the boys were expected to go out in the barn in the morning before school, you know, then clean up a little bit and go to school, then after school come and you know, work until chores were done and then eat supper.

And it always used to get me when some kids at school would say, "I didn't have time to do my homework."

And it's like, hmm, you didn't have to go out on the barn when you got home from school, I did.

- When I got a little older, like 12 years old or something, I don't remember, but I just remember saying to Dad, "I don't like doing housework.

I would rather work out in the barn."

So he gave me a job to do in the barn.

He said, "All right, you can put the milk pails together," which they were all pieces and parts and they had to be put together before chores every evening.

And I lasted two days.

I was done, I didn't wanna do it anymore, so.

- One of my biggest memories of Dad was his love for baseball.

I mean, he would sit out at night, no shirt on, Budweiser in his hand, in his lawn chair listening to the Cardinals every night, listen on the radio.

- [Mary] One of the things he said is that there was nine kids, so he had a baseball team and we used to play ball out in the field.

- He was an old-fashioned farmer where you don't get days off, you're a farmer, but if you had a baseball game, you played baseball, you didn't have to work.

Baseball superseded it.

(Gertrude laughing) (bright music) (leaves rustling) So when the farm sold in 1991 to a Russian company or corporation, the intent was to bring Russian students over here, I think, I believe, through Middlebury College.

- [Mary] It was through Middlebury College, yeah.

- To learn how to farm and then, you know, go back to Russia.

But with the fall of the Soviet Union, it never happened, which was kind of sad because would've been nice to see this particular farm remain operating as it was.

- The house was a beautiful house.

And to look at it now, I mean, it's just very sad.

(gentle music) (cicadas chirping) - When we sold the farm, it was pretty much, it was on me because all my brothers, one at a time left the farm and I was the last one.

So I knew if I left, the farm was done.

But I made that decision.

I wanted to do something different because that's all I knew was farming, and I wanted to see what it was like out there, have days off (laughs) and weekends off.

So that was the hardest thing for me to do, that decision to make, yep.

(gentle music continues) (vehicles droning) (bright music) - When my husband took me down here to see this farm that he was thinking of buying, and first of all, I looked at the house and half of the roof of the house was gone.

And I'm thinking, there's no way I'm bringing my mom up from Brooklyn to see this.

But then I looked diagonally over to this building and I looked at it and I said, "My gosh, I think that was a school house."

And of course it wasn't recognizable because it was a big square in the front of the building.

The bank of windows, half the windows were gone, you walked in, the floors were all broken and it was completely off the foundation.

- The story that I was always told was, a farmer used to use this land and he would use this building as a shed to keep his machinery.

So tractors were coming in and out all the time.

And so clearly they didn't value it as what it once was.

- And I came in, I thought, being a teacher, I love this building, I wanna restore this.

Paul and I at the time had two children and I was pregnant with my third.

So it was like, okay, this kind of has to go to the back burner for a while.

(bright music continues) It took us years.

I think we started this project in 1970, probably '-7 or '79.

Okay, and it took years because we didn't have any money.

We had zero money.

- Farmers, yeah.

- Farmers, you know, grain bills had to be paid.

- Sure.

- And now, you know, Paul has a wife that wants to restore this.

"Marian, just use it a shed."

- Right.

- My first phone call I made was to our state department and they came down and I said, "I wanna restore this.

Are there grants out there for me to restore this?"

And they looked at it and they looked at me and they said, "Just use it as a shed."

- Yeah (laughs).

- And I said, "I love this building, I'm not gonna keep it as a shed."

(bright music continues) This building was the heart and the soul of our community.

This is where they held public discussions, voting.

- [Erin] Any meetings.

- [Marian] Any meetings.

- [Erin] Services.

- [Marian] So teachers would get here very early in the morning, ride a horse, come down here if they didn't live with the farmer.

- [Erin] Because typically the teacher, from what I remember you telling me, the teacher would always live across the street close because it was her responsibility to come in early in the morning to heat up the building.

(bright music) - [Marian] The cupboard is original with the building.

That was here and the wall wasn't touched.

And that was the cupboard that the teacher would've put her bell in at night for safekeeping.

- [Erin] And of course there's two entrances because the boys would come in on one side and the ladies would come in on the other side.

- [Marian] And girls would enter the building first.

(bright music continues) (crickets chirping) Originally the school bell was on just a post, a wooden post on the front of this building.

And when I started to renovate this, I wanted it to sing "school".

And the research showed that depending on how much money the community had, they would've had a belfry.

So we put the belfry up there, but we put a rope on it.

And we always tell people from out here, and people stop, "You have to ring it before you come in, and then you gotta ring it when you leave."

(bright music continues) (bell ringing) (bright music continues) (bell ringing) (bell ringing) (train honking) (bell ringing) - My name is Laura Trieschmann.

I'm the Vermont State Historic Preservation Officer and the Director of the Division for Historic Preservation.

(bright music) The New Haven Railroad Depot wasn't constructed until 1868.

We know that because there are newspaper accounts announcing the construction of a new brick depot for New Haven.

The New Haven Depot started really as cargo.

There were multiple tracks that surrounded the depot on both sides.

Passenger service of course, was beneficial to the community, bringing people up to Burlington and down to Middlebury and Vergennes.

The depot was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in October of 1978, designed in the Italianate style, which is a very common architectural style for railroad depots in the late 19th century.

The story of the railroad depot becomes very interesting after the Rutland and Burlington Railroad Company ceases operations in 1961.

For three years after that, the building just sat vacant.

The state of Vermont then took over the right of ways and ownership of a number of the depots along the line, including the New Haven Railroad Depot.

(bright music continues) So in 2015, we took a trip down to the depot to meet with the construction company that was leasing it to talk about renewing the lease, to talk about the structural needs of the building, the maintenance that needed to happen.

That's when I started hearing inklings that, well, the trains are going to be coming through more often, and they're going to be coming through faster.

So for several years, I kept trying to find out more definitively when the trains were coming in faster, how fast were they going?

What was this going to do to our building?

In December of 2020, I got the letter from the Agency of Transportation saying, this building is blocking the sight lines to the intersection.

So we knew we had to do something quickly.

And the Agency of Transportation partnered with us to figure out the future of the building.

They were very optimistic and hopeful that the building could be saved and relocated.

I was probably the one that said in the back of my mind, "I need to be prepared if demolition is the final alternative."

So it wasn't until January of 2021 that we reached out to the town and said, "Okay, we've got to move quickly."

- In January of this year, I was chairman of the Select Board and tenants that were currently here at that point in time notified us that they had been told that they needed to be vacated out of here by June because this building was either gonna get moved or tore down.

So, that just kind of like, where did this all come from all of a sudden?

I mean, why didn't we know this ahead of time?

And so we started digging into it a little bit.

And after talking to a number of people, there'd been discussion through V Trans, Amtrak and them for five years that this building was on target to be moved or demolished, but no one ever notified the town.

- I mean, how are we going to move this building in 11 months?

Who's going to pay for this?

Town of New Haven doesn't have any money for this.

I mean, we can't spend $1 million doing this.

Our whole budget is, you know, only about $1 million.

This has been crunch time right from day one on.

And so we have to come up with some kind of a solution and how this is all going to happen.

There's a ton of history that goes on with this building, and we weren't ready to see it just tore down.

We started looking for places to put it.

Where could we move it to that would be relevant to the train station?

(vehicle droning) (gentle music) (workers chattering) (gentle music continues) - [Laura] Moving 150 year old brick building that is on an active railroad sitting along an active road is quite a challenge.

(gentle music continues) (electricity fizzing) - [Steve] So the challenge is to be able to stabilize this building during the move, and still save the historic interior as much as possible.

Some demolition that's going to have to happen interior for them to be able to put cross bracing in to stabilize this building during that move.

Because brick, as we all can imagine, doesn't like to flex very much.

It's got to be a very rigid building when we're done.

- [Laura] The building will be stripped on the interior, nail by nail.

We will examine when those materials date from.

Do they date from 1868?

Do they date from after it was hit by the railroad car?

- The chimneys will come down to help lower the height of the building.

That brick will be saved, cleaned, and then it will be reconstructed back on site again.

(gentle music) This town has been important to me.

I guess you don't realize that till you start to get older.

It's not important when you're young.

When I was growing up, there was farms all over this town.

There was four farms on the road that I grew up on, which is only 1.6 miles long.

There's no farms there that are active anymore.

There's farmland that's still being farmed, but there's no cows getting milked out there anymore.

And if you look in this town right now, I believe there's only three active farms that have cows on them and milking, I should say dairy.

There was probably 75 50 years ago.

So we're starting to lose some of that stuff.

And the only way barns get maintained, if there's something to pay for them.

And once the cows are gone and the milk stop flowing, they become a liability instead of an asset to the property.

And it's not just barns, just many old buildings that go away.

With the one room schoolhouses either get converted into a house or they fall down somewhere along the way if they aren't getting used.

And that was where this building was going to come into.

If we didn't do something with it, it was not going to be here any longer.

I guess we just have to think about our past and maybe our ancestors and you know, what they did and how they lived.

(gentle music) My father went through the Depression.

He remembered it really well.

He died this year, he was 100.

And his parents owned a very small farm.

They eked out a living, like many small farmers did.

They had all they wanted to eat, but they never really had any money.

That's our heritage, that's our history.

And so if we see those buildings and that stuff goes away, we don't save any of it and we don't tell stories about it, we're not going to have it for the future generations.

(gentle music continues) - There are many historic buildings that are threatened with alteration, demolition, change as we want to develop and progress.

And that's only natural.

You don't want to put millions of dollars into saving something just to have it sit empty in a new location.

This building has been the center of this community, and now physically, it's going to be in the center of the community.

It won't be right next to railroad tracks.

It won't be a railroad station, but it will continue to tell that story and have a new life.

And it's something that we can be proud of, not just for having it built, but for saving it.

It's a preservation success story.

- [Jim] Beautiful.

- That damn thing better move.

(group laughing) (wind howling) (switch thumping) (wind howling) (machinery droning) (workers chattering) (gentle music) (flames roaring) (gentle music continues) (workers chattering) (gentle music continues) (machinery creaking) (gentle music continues) (wind whistling) (gentle music continues) (bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (gentle music) (bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (alarm ringing) (button clicking) (Jim groaning) (birds chirping) - I'm up before sunrise to map out my day.

After getting into town late last night, I was just happy to find somewhere to sleep.

(bright music) (bright music continues) The town's only station was already closed when I rolled in.

And seeing that I was on a quarter tank, I'm just praying they're open before I hit the road today.

(bright music continues) I'm chasing down a few more leads today, but sometimes it just feels like I'm chasing ghosts.

(bright music continues) (vehicle droning) What is that?

(vehicle droning) (bright music) You have got to be kidding me.

Is that a depot, a homestead?

(vehicle droning) Oh-oh.

The train parked behind it.

(bright music continues) (footsteps thumping) Now, although I've been at this for a while, I haven't even scratched the surface in my thus far limited travels.

So many structures, so little time.

(bright music continues) (footsteps thumping) It would take me a dozen lifetimes to cover the country in a way that would pay proper homage to all the structures and all the people who had their stories to tell.

But if I can make people sit up and notice with what I am able to capture, well, maybe that's just got to be enough.

(bright music continues) I've met so many wonderful people in my travels, and though many of these encounters have been brief, they've lingered with me for years.

I can still see the weathered hands and smiling faces.

I still hear the pride in the voices as they share stories about their great grandparents homesteading on the very land upon which we're standing.

(bright music) (vehicle droning) So after driving 280 some odd miles today, we are entering the little town of Rapelje.

(bright music continues) (vehicle droning) Man, look at those.

(bright music continues) (birds chirping) (door rattling) (bright music continues) (door thumping) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (birds chirping) So now, let me ask you, what's your place in this story?

Perhaps you've seen one of these tired old beauties in your travels, or maybe even in your own backyard.

Will you give it a second glance?

If you linger for just a moment, maybe you can see your own grandfather's hands in the rusted nails and the faded clapboard.

(dramatic music) Will I ever be done with this project?

I'm only getting started, for this is my love song to the faded, the crumbling, the peeling and the rusted, to the hard working, enterprising and honest people who were brave enough to wrestle a living and a life from the land.

(bright music) And that's a wrap.

(bright music continues) And now, as I head out in search of the next fading gem, let me leave you with this.

Open your eyes and appreciate what we have for this brief moment in time.

Be intentional.

Connect with our older generation and those who know the history of the land before they too are no longer with us.

And let this be an encouragement to treasure these structures now, for sadly, most will eventually surrender and fold back into the ground that they were built upon, taking their stories with them.

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