Pondsville Barns

Every time my family drives from Pittsburgh to Thurmont, we get off Rte. 70 at the Smithsburg-Boonsboro exit and drive east over the northern part of South Moutain and through some of the Catoctins, both of which are part of the Blue Ridge that sticks down from Pennsylvania into Maryland between Hagerstown and Thurmont. We always pass through this valley that my mom calls "My Valley" because it's so pretty -- just rolling hills and fields and old-school looking farms. So the other day we took a trip there to photograph the pretty old barns, and found out that the area is called Pondsville/Myerstown. The above barn is on a property that the owner told us dates to the late 18th century called Hewitt's Meadows.

Here's the backside of Hewitt's Meadows, with the cow barn, in the late afternoon light. Roy, who was shooting on his Dual-Reflex medium-format camera from the 1950s, told me that the following picture, which I took on his Nikon D-80 digital SLR, in fact sucks, because the sky is overexposed. You see, I'm learning, here, people, and that's what's important.



Here's another farm. Didn't get the name of this one, but the owner saw us shooting and accused us of terrorist intentions, at which point we had to explain to him the aesthetics of agricultural photography, which he didn't buy, so we had to leave Matt there as collateral. He's still working off the debt we incurred by trespassing. Whatever you're doing out there, Matt, we support you.


Happy farmer. Let's call him "Earl".



The Red Bridge farm. Right near the Pondsville Road.






Matt. Wishing you luck in your captivity as an indentured servant to the grotesque farmers of Pondsville. We'll try to break you out soon.