That little tiny dot is my grandfather walking over to the cafe. His truck is parked by the fruit stand for unloading fruit.
I’m in the stand, but you wouldn’t know it.
That was my job in 1958, manning the fruit stand. I’m sure I didn’t do a very good job, but I felt important.
This is a 60 acre fruit farm, complete with cherries, apples, prunes, blood plums and pears. The 10 acres (you can’t see) are pasture for the milk cow and her calf.
I lived with my parents at the edge of the cherry orchard.
Today, if you were to drive by this place on your way to either Eckert, or Cedaredge, or Grand Mesa, Colorado, all you would see would be houses. Everything is gone.
Not a tree or orchard anywhere. Just houses and houses and more houses.
Progress always moves forward and the older you get, the past always seems better.
Linda
Life on a Colorado Farm 
Great memories, Linda.
They were the days – all good fun! I’m sure your granddad would have been very proud of your “salesgirlship” ( new word?).
Also amazing to see how clean everything looked and the fruit orchards so well maintained.
It’s no wonder you love your “rural” lifestyle – nothing is like the country lifestyle.
Cheers
“HB”
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It always bothers me to see good farm land paved over for development. I read somewhere that it was illegal to build on farm land in some place in France. Houses had to go on the rocky ground or the hills around the good soil. Hmmmm
My folks had a photo of their farm taken from an airplane. It was fun to see it from a different angle. I think pilots raised a little spending money doing that sort of thing.
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Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I HATE progress! :o(
What beautiful memories, though. I am always trying to recreate the simple things of the past, while not standing still in the present and planning for the future. Life can be sort of complicated sometimes.
Thanks for the walk down Cherry Lane. (((HUGS)))
~Faith
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1958…..I was 13. I really liked the 50’s. Everything seemed safe and kind then ….. even though we probably really know things probably were’nt. The farm where I grew up in Idaho is all taken over be developments and I’ll tell ya……it’s hard to go back and see that. I guess I just wish progress hadn’t developed so darn fast. Completely different world now than it was then.
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I’m sure you hold those wonderful memories close to your heart.
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Thanks for sharing memories. Those were good times as children. Things have changed here too, housing tracs everywhere and mini malls, things have changed so much in my 42 years I cant imagine how my husbands 95 year old grandma thinks about it! She still lives across the street. She is 90% blind now, and cant get out on her own, but she has great stories to tell!
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That is the sad thing about progress. It takes away the farm land.
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I know what you mean. Just this weekend I was going through old pictures for a project I am working on. The house I grew up in was surrounded by flat fields full of sage brush and cactus. People in our little town had no grass and not that many trees. The high dessert (o: I can imagine the buffalo that were there ages ago. Now HOUSES.
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What a shame that houses have replaced your productive little farm. It looks and sounds wonderful. I was still living in a small city that year, dreaming of growing up and getting out in the country where I could have animals.
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What a neat picture! Is is amazing, and sad, how much rural areas are being built up in such a short amount of time. Even in Loma, where I grew up, it is getting so built up. I took care of an older woman once who had a picture of Mt. Garfield with fields going right up to the base of it and deer grazing. She had lots of stories to tell!
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Sad but true! It is amazing how some of the most productive farm lands are built and paved over. The Santa Clara valley once provided fruit for the world and now it is Silicon Valley. Progress! Phooey!
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The field behind my house when I was a kid has long been turned in to apt buildings. It used to make me cry to see how much the land was getting eaten away. Seriously, it would keep me awake at night.
Somehow I have learned to be pragmatic and thicker skinned about it. But it still does not change that gut feeling.
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I wasn’t even born yet when you were having a job already! I’ve read somewhere that we always like the music best that we liked when we were teenagers. I think this counts for many other things too. It’s like in our minds, we always want to live in the world the way it was when we were 16, everything else seems less good…
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I drove by our old dairy farm a few days ago. It was so sad to see the dairy barn torn down. The beautiful old hay barn gone. Our old but beautiful farm house replaced with a modern home. But thankfully the memories of what once was is still present in my mind. The girls were very young when their daddy died but still have a few memories of the dairy farm. Enjoyed sharing your memory. Have a blessed Thanksgiving.
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Great photo Linda –
I think so many of us look back on our past and do not see “progress” as such an improvement. I know I miss the wide open space and I hate to see the house upon house syndrome everywhere.
It must have been wonderful to have access to all that deliceous fruit!
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Wow – isn’t it nice to look back sometimes? Things always change, and it always seems like so many houses are being built. But there are some places were there is no subdivision, no new houses all alike sitting in rows, aren’t there?
That’s what I love about Colorado, or the west in general. It’s not as overpopulated as here on the east coast. There is nature, and beauty not touched by man still out there. I so look forward to my vacations back there to visit family, to see the rugged beauty, to get away from all the people & craziness of Washington DC!
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Part of this is so sad – all the orchards gone… – but part is kind of happy. “we lived at the edge of the cherry orchard”. At least someone remembers the time and place and now you’ve shared it with others who will appreciate it. What a great picture. A treasure.
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Love this post – thanks for sharing! It is so sad to see productive farm ground just paved over. Our neighbors who subdivided their place and sold it in small 1 – 5 acre farmettes, now complain about all the new neighbors and the increased traffic! All the proceeds went to buy cars and vacations that are now long gone… .
I bet you were more help than you knew!!
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Love that shot of your farm. 1958 I was in highschool. Oh,… just thinking back I get dewy eyed and wish so much I could go home for supper one more time. Better times? I really think they were. Thanks for the memory…..
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Times change..progress is not all it is cracked up to be. I bet it was beautiful there back then..fragrant and productive..:)
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Your post made me cry. It’s so true. Vermont is vanishing every day and something so precious is being lost to development and mcmansions. Here in the Ozarks, where we are at the moment, cows outnumber people and it is just so pleasant to see a slower, gentler way of life where farming comes first.
I too live so much in the past when the land was wide open and not all these subdivisions popping up. So very sad to say a way of life almost gone.
I’m very thankful I had the opportunity to experience it all when it was as your picture showed.
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