30 Buildings Every American Farm Needed Before Electricity (Most Are Gone Today)

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Drive past an American farm today and you will see a house, a machine shed, and maybe a barn nobody uses. Drive past the same place in 1935 and you would have counted twelve or fifteen separate buildings standing in that yard, and every one of them was there for a reason.

That reason was electricity, or rather the complete absence of it. In 1935 only about one American farm in ten had power at the pole. Everything a modern farm does with a motor, a pump, or a compressor had to be done instead with a building — with walls thick enough, air moving the right way, and the sun on the correct side. An ice house is a refrigerator made of sawdust. A windmill and a tank tower are a water system made of wind and gravity. A summer kitchen exists because a wood range in August is unbearable in a house.

These are 30 buildings every American farm needed before the power line came — and why almost all of them are gone.

How many buildings were in the yard where you grew up, and which one is still standing? Tell me in the comments.

#FarmLife #RuralAmerica #1930s #1950s #FarmHistory #OldFarm #CountryLife #Nostalgia

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