0.2.3 aerial view 1939 and later: forest succession
I've written captions about what I can see in the earlier photos and more information from after I bought the place in 1999.
There are two main sources for these photos: The Boone County tax office and Google maps where I found a way to see older maps that I can't find again. There are quite possibly some other place I got some of these photos from -- I did several multiple hour collecting expeditions, almost always needing to fiddle to get as big a displayed image as I could and then capturing the screen. In many cases that meant getting several adjacent images and using the Lightroom panorama tool to stitch them together.
I use these very large (i.e. about four times screen size) to annotate images with paths and trails and notes about the land and permaculture considerations.
I almost wish I had a really detailed photomap, one I could inventory every tree and bush with. I do have a drone, but I'm not a pilot. It turns out I am in a flight path, so maximum elevation is 400 feet. As I learned later, this would be about 100 images for a decent camera drone.
I did hire a drone buy who thought he was pretty good, but who didn't understand that I actually need an aerial photo run, like the kind they do for photo recon. He insisted that there was a built in feature that would do that. It might have worked if the place had been totally flat and had no trees, just roads and grass and maybe flowers and square houses.
The individual images made were good, but the overlap did not take into account wind or shadows and the winter woods are just a blurry mess when I should have got a nice clear shot as a few of these maps show for winter.
1939 The diamond is the location of the house today. The current southern and eastern property lines are also clear from the vegetation. The southwest corner was wooded back then and by extension visually you can see where that corner is. I don't know what was in the open areas other than a lot of erosion. Doesn't look like crops in this photo.
1939 This image at least shows clearly that most of this property, marked at 15 here, was plain open field; maybe even bar dirt. The fence line on the east still has those trees, and the far western part of this place have the oldest trees. Looks to me like the plat book registration lines are a bit off to the east, based on the way the fence lines show up.
1956 a The property line overlay is off quite a bit on this one. Should be more to the right and further up.
1956 b In this one, the county map people got the registration wrong and the diamond is down on the southern border. The woods in the southwest corner appear to be thicker and maybe even spreading out a bit. No house here yet, but the little house in front by the road is here. And there doesn't seem to be as much erosion as there is in other nearby open areas.
1962
1962 There is a house now. County says it was built in 1958. Looks like the workshop was put up at the same time and a field plowed nearby.
1968 And now there's a barn and a large pond in the middle of the woods and another pond up closer to the house. Work has started on what will become a four lane highway.
1977 The upper part is being kept clear, and in fact the woods pushed back a bit. Does not appear to be any crops growing. The field that was next to the workshop seems to have faded away.
1980 Appears to be basically the same as 1977 in terms of forest and cleared land. Very difficult to see in this photo. Can see that there is progress on the highway.
1991 In this image, the forest is pretty well contained to the west. Mos of the eastern half appears to be cleared except the large pine by the house and a few cedar trees scattered around. Looks like a new attempt at a crop of some kind closer to the barn. Notice the lighter colored triangle up near the road. That's where the Cedar grove is coming up now. with only a few black locust and persimmons in attendance.
1994
1994 Both ponds appear to be bigger, and there are more cleared fields with ground cover that looks the same in color and texture as the open areas in what will become the golf course housing development. Work has started on what will become next door.
1995 The 6 acres or so in the north have been split off and a new house is being built there. A few more trees are in evidence in the fields. The roads for the housing development are being built.
2002
2002 It's too bad the quality of this image is so bad, it's hard to see the changes in the forest, though the addition of the lagoon is obvious, as is a new roof on the house, a storage shed and the cleared area by the barn. Also two new houses to the south.
2004 Again, terrible image quality, but still can see that the forest is creeping from left to right.
2005 I plowed that rectangle of brown. Didn't end up planting there, though. In fact had to sell the tractor the next year. In the meantime had been adding bushes and trees along the north and east borders, though all very young at this point.
2006 Much better quality photo, it's easy to see the property line to the north, with the short cut lawn to the north and the many bushes I have coming up to the south.
