Damn depressing. But they deserve a shout. Thousands of these old family farmhouses sit empty and decaying. Each house was a setting for love, laughter, life. But during the 1980s and thereafter, thousands of families were driven from their homesteads.

And the old houses starve for shingles and paint, hands and feet.

And laughter. And love.

Each year brings more pain to these old houses, and their trusses and gables sag under the weight of neglect. It’s a sad chapter in American history, the vanishing family farm.

Driving every mile of Missouri roads, I passed ’em all, and photographed hundreds.