Prepare For a Downpour

Come and find out why the photo submissions for the February 2021 issue deeply moved an editor.

Reader Contribution by Leslie Mcmanus
Published on January 14, 2021
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by Carol McIntire
Welcome to Farm Collector’s annual show photo issue! Do you have a tissue handy?

A lot of you folks put up a tough front, but underneath it, I suspect many of you are just plain old softies. Sentimental, like me. Based on my experience in the past few weeks, looking at these pictures, reading the notes people sent with the photos, spending some time with each photo, I predict locally heavy showers in your immediate future.

We knew there’d be fewer shows for people to attend this year, so we invited folks to send any photo that had special meaning to them. The photos they shared tell stories nearly impossibly sweet. Neighbors helping neighbors. Fathers honoring fathers, fathers helping sons, fathers teaching kids and grandkids. Friends and family finding way to be together.

You’ll also see a wedding with a bride in a white gown and men in plaid shirts and Sunday-best overalls. Decades-old black-and-white snapshots freeze a moment in time, when equipment was new and proud owners busted buttons showing it off.

I am a writer, but I have deep appreciation for the power of a picture. I can’t look at the black-and-white photo in this issue, showing more than two dozen farmers who did spring work for an ailing neighbor, without getting choked up. Same for a wedding in front of a steam engine, or a boy driving an antique tractor pulling an antique combine, or a father-and-son selfie.

Pictures also have the power to lighten our moods. Since seeing a photo in this issue, my husband and I have a running gag about staying “one cow apart” when we’re out and about (this will make more sense to you once you get a chance to look at the photos in this issue). A photo sent in by a man who could laugh at himself makes me smile every time I look at it, as do several shots of kids enjoying old iron.

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