My granparents farm is in Neponset, Illinios, about1 hour from the border of Iowa on I-80. My grandparents both grew up about a half mile from where their farm is today. My mom grew up there, she left when she was 18 or 19 to attend nursing school in Minneapolis, where she met my dad. The road the farm is on is called the Osceola road, because it leads to the town of Osceola. The stretch from where it begins until it arrives in Osceola is about 8 miles. All the houses and farms on this stretch are owned by Shaners, my grandparents name. The first farm house is my uncle Shaner's. He has the same name as my grandad so he has always been called Shaner, which is weird because it never sounds like you're calling him by his last name, next is my grandparents farm, now run by my two uncles,Tim and Shaner. My grandad is in a nursing home but my grandmother still lives on the farm. Next is Aunt Velma. She was married to Randoll Shaner, my grandad's brother, he died a long time ago. Her son Dennis Shaner is a couple miles further down the road. After you get to Oscoela and turn left you reach Uncle Tim's farm.
When I was a kid we would spend a couple weeks in the summer on the farm, it was like having the coolest playground at our disposal, with tractor rides and forts in hay, cats all over, and cows in the pasture. It is still someplace I go to spend a week of every summer. I am a photographer working with ideas of place and self, which I think started from my relationship to this place. I find it so reasuring that these people I know have spent so much time in one place. And that I have a connection to the land through this accumulated history. It is amazing to me that my uncles, for intance, have driven up and down the Oseola road to the field, the pasture where the cows are and the hay barn, several times a day for at least the last 50 or so years. I think that so few people in America have that kind of connection to places anymore. It is something that I envy yet I am not sure I would put myself in that lifestyle for that long. But I can always go to the farm and pretend. I feel fortunate to have this connection that is close to that, by dint of my family.