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room’s got the blues
For the past 17 years, I’ve driven by this farmhouse several times a week. I’ve stopped to look at it twice, a sort of embarrassingly low number.
The first time I stopped, there was a bird nest in the mailbox, a couple of barn owls, and a snake. And a bunch of junk piled up inside.
The second time, I didn’t see any wildlife but the bird nest was just as I remembered it. The junk was still there, only with more rodent/bird droppings and increased disintegration. But what I somehow don’t even remember from the first visit was this very-blue room. It must have felt so design-y and original when it was new, which makes it feel even sadder now.
Hockley County, Texas
photographed 5.31.2026
alma r.
When I find places like this – abandoned farmhouses – I don’t know anything about who lived there or why they left, of course. That leaves me to create a narrative, which is usually more or less the same: farming/ranching got too unaffordable and the family had to leave.
This farmhouse had at least two resident owls. And a brand-new KitchenAid dishwasher, still in the original box, and a stack of printed book-covers like I remember from school but that I don’t think anyone uses any more. And I wonder if Alma R signed the wall the day she left, or if that was a later addition by some visiting vandals.
Cochran County, Texas
photographed 5.31.2026
a bird’s nest in the mailbox
There were some subtle signs to tell us that this farmhouse was unoccupied. The holes in the roof. The broken windows. The height of the weeds. A couple of kitchen appliances in the yard. The bird’s nest in the mailbox.
(Although the flag was up, as though someone intended to mail the nest?)
(Also, we scared up a pair of barn owls and saw a snake. For a place with nothing going on, there was a lot happening.)
Hockley County, Texas
photographed 8.3.2024
One Day | One Image 