On my way home from work last night I stopped to take some photographs of the dandelions going to seed. This empty lot is just down the road from where we live. It’s a small pocket of land where urban sprawl meets farmland. I turned to look across the street, and what I found there was even more interesting and beautiful than this seemingly endless patch of dandelion fluffs.
Across the intersection from the place where the dandelions have taken over is a farm where, until recently, sheep have wandered the hills grazing. That peaceful pastoral scene isn’t long for this part of Ontario, however, as farmers and landowners nearby are selling their property to developers. That farmer’s land now features a large, green for-sale sign that indicates he’s moving on. Slowly, slowly, sadly, homes are encroaching, taking over spaces where agriculture once dominated the land. Orchards and corn fields are becoming subdivisions.
One of the holdouts, down the road from us.
As a girl whose family comes from a farming background, this makes me sad. Little bits of my family’s heritage are disappearing from the Ontario landscape faster than I’m comfortable with. I feel the need to capture them before they are all gone for good.
