The Farm

This lovely old farmhouse, located in Charlottesville, VA, was my mother’s childhood home. When I was a kid vacations meant going to visit relatives and for me that was this wonderful place. To escape from the suburbs of New York and all its heat to Charlottesville was divine. Yes, it was still hot but there were chickens and turkeys and calves and Black Angus cattle to take your mind off the heat. It wasn’t a grand old southern plantation, it was a working farm and I loved it.

My aunt survived my uncle and stayed on at the farm until she was 93. That year she fell and ended up in a nursing home. She died a few months later and on Easter Sunday of that year, the farm burned to the ground.

The property now goes by the name Argylle Estates, a luxury home development. My aunt and uncle wouldn’t recognize it.

This picture is the memory I’ll keep of that time, those people and that place.

If you'd like to order this print, made in my studio and signed by me, it's available at my Etsy.com shop by clicking here.

Additional prints done to various sizes -- some even on canvas -- are available by clicking on this gallery.

Image copyright 2010 Virginia McLaren.