The Vass Homestead

Located alongside White Lake in Hardwick is the old Vass Homestead. Born Johann Wass, he emigrated to America in 1764 and changed his name to Vass. One of the first settlers in the area he ran a successful farm, and his sons established a business selling ice taken from White Lake, and mining the shells from the bottom of the lake and crushing them for use inf fertilizer and cement.

The farm house has been preserved, the other buildings on the property, not so good a shape. You can read more about the man and the property at this website.

More pictures

The Turkey Vulture Property

I dont know anything about this property. I was driving in PA and saw it and said “lemme check this out” There were 4 buildings and 2 were pretty well sealed up. the 3rd was wide open and the 4th was wholy unsuitable to enter for safety reasons. I call this the turkey vulture property because there was agigantic turkey vulture flying overhead as I pulled up and he justkept circling.

Abandoned farm in Phillipsburg

An explorer friend of mine messages me and says “Hey I found this great big farm! I didn’t have time to check it out because it was almost dark. Wanna go with me?” How could I resist? So I met up with him Friday and checked it out. It appears to have been abandoned for maybe 8-10 years or so. The place was pretty well cleaned out. We didn’t find the usual leavings, like mail and garbage and clothing. We found a few toys here and there, a little bit of junk amongst the weeds and bushes but very little else. There was no evidence of kids or squatters either. No beer cans, bottles or drug use. No graffiti. I like to find stuff left behind, sometimes you can learn a bit about the people or the place. Not here, but it was nice to not see a place ruined by vandals either.

It looked like your typical farm. there definitely were animals raised here, and there was a fairly large corn field that was fallow. Interestingly the corn was still growing in neat rows. Apparently the birds eats the corn cobs as they fall but enough kernels remain to seed new plants. The buildings are in rough shape but nothing that couldn’t be salvaged. The buildings were probably built in the 50’s. There was a garage/shed type building, one large main barn with some smaller wings built off to the side, as well as the two actual houses. The houses had a very weird layout, I suspect it was expanded at some point. Its the only way to explain the layout.

I’m surprised it is still here and that its pretty untouched. Its in what I would say a prime retail location and is easily visible from the road…..

All the photos are here or go to the Facebook group

Abandoned barn in Warren County

abandoned, barn, farm, warrencounty, nj

Big red barn in PA

There’s not much to say about this barn. it’s highly visible on a main road in PA in the delaware water gap. I was pretty obvious as I entered the property. Some would say I was brave. Others would say stupid. They’d both be right.

a not so bandoned farm in PA

Yet another farm near the Delaware river in PA. I’m pretty sure somebody owns it, they jsut ain’t doing anything with it right now. Didn’t go inside any of the buildings, they were sealed fairly tight. There was 3-4 buildings including one which was leaning so far to the side I wouldn’t go in if you paid me. It was right on the road, so doing anything more than just wandering would’ve been… unwise.

not

old barn and stables

This massive barn and horse stable was part of a farm that went out of business about a decade ago. The farmer’s home next to the barn lies dormant and falling apart as well.

I discovered a running water hose, and based on some estimates of water pressure and time, I figure if it had been running since the farm was abandoned (10 years) and with a flow rate of 2 gallons per minute, that over 10 million gallons of water wasted. A garden hose can produces 6.5 gallons per minute though, so at full pressure (which it didn’t seem to be at) that would raise the figure to 35 million gallons of water wasted.

When I visited this place in 2003, the entire property was for sale to be turned into townhouses within a year. I doubt it’s still there now…

The back looked worse then the front and showed complete disrepair. I doubt this place could be salvaged. Interesting that this place went downhill so fast in only 8 years while other places abandoned much longer are in much better shape….

Doorknobs?

Pfaff barn

this photo came to me in an email from JH

This picture is of the Pfaff round barn it was built in 1933 by the Pfaff family…as an experiment in modern farming techniques…in townsbury nj on janes chapel road… this is the only roundbarn in new jersey…there are two other semi-circular barns in new jersey……like i said… i sent this once before…if you can use it have fun…if you only look at this picture…remember…the round barn is owned by the state of new jersey….and they have not even tried to preserve it or stabilize the structure…

Stables and horse barn

I saw this barn while I was investigating something else and stopped by. It was clearly not abandoned, but the owner was very cooperative. He invited me to come back and take all the photos I wanted, which I was happy to do. The property used to be a horse stable with a 1/2 mile race track to train horses on. There was a main master house with 6 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and 4 fireplaces. There was also a servants houses, the barn and stables, as well as another servants house where the current owner lived.

As we approached the master house we saw a giant turkey vulture land on the chimney but we were too far away to get a decent picture. Also as we approached closer there were curtains waving in the wind, but when we went inside there were no open doors or windows, and the curtains had stopped waving… Spooky.

Lots more pictures here

The music barn

Found this barn in the Delawar Water Gap up near Walpack. It’s near an abandoned summer camp, and wqe stopped by on our way over there. We didn’t go inside, it didn’t look safe, judging by the angle of the roof in the photo to the left. More pictures here.