Blog

Old Chevy Heavy Farm Truck

Agriculture, Automobile, Farm, Randolph County

(photograph copyright 2009 by Dan Routh)

My community, Grays Chapel, was traditionally a farming community until just a few years ago. Development has spread into the area and it has become more and more a bedroom community for Greensboro and the Triad. There is still a lot of rural space left, however, and there are many old farms, and with these old operations, there is a world of old farm equipment and vehicles. Time has produced a patina on many of them and they take on the effect of historical sculpture. This old Chevrolet heavy farm truck sits sleeping in my neighbor’s barnyard.

2009 Tour de Lions Photos

Cycling, Randolph County, Sports


On Saturday morning, almost 400 bicycle riders from all over the state of North Carolina took part in the 10th annual Grays Chapel Lions Club’s Tour de Lions bike ride. The ride is a 75 mile tour through Randolph and Chatham counties in central NC. Money raised through the ride helps support the local club’s programs for the visually impaired. Weather for the event was gorgeous. Though it’s not officially a race, the event attracts serious riders who put on quite a show with pelethons and breakaways, as well as those who are just out for a nice spring morning ride through beautiful countryside. I try to cover the tour each year because my late Father was a life-long member of the Grays Chapel club. For more info on the ride, go to http://www.tourdelions.org/. (There should be a gallery of more images posted soon on the Tour website.)







(photographs copyright 2009 by Dan Routh)

Old Farm Outbuildings

Agriculture, Family, Farm, Randolph County


The most interesting things sometimes on old North Carolina farm homeplaces are the many outbuildings. At my Grandfather’s homeplace in Grays Chapel (Randolph County,south of Greensboro) there are several; a smokehouse, a washhouse, a chicken coop, pack house and grainery, besides the regular barn. Each had it’s specific use and each still has it’s own personality.


(photographs copyright 2009 by Dan Routh)

Banned from Facebook

Business, Facebook

As of yesterday, I became part of an apparently growing number of people who have been banned by Facebook for no apparent reason with no prior warning. I have looked through their terms of service and can only figure that I connected with too many people using FB’s own “people you may know” service. I have been using Facebook as an extension of this blog and used their own service of having my blog posts automatically show up as a link on my Facebook page. Will I get my FB page back? Who knows. I have contacted their customer service, but they have not bothered to email an answer back to me. Oh well. I did enjoy the social networking abilities that Facebook seemed to offer, but, I probably spent too much time there anyway. My time is probably better spent shooting and sharing those images here.

UPDATE: As of 5-19-09 and after numerous emails to Facebook, I have had absolutely no response.

UPDATE 5-20-09: No response from Facebook.

UPDATE 5-21-09: Ditto

UPDATE 5-22-09: No Response

UPDATE 5-24-09: Not a word.

UPDATE 5-26-09: Total silence.

UPDATE 5-27-09: Connected to a guy named Joseph (or an automated reply?) who said I couldn’t talk to anyone at that email address and was directed back to the original address from which I have had no reply.

UPDATE 6-01-09: Still no response from Facebook.

UPDATE 6-10-09: Facebook who?

Spring Grass Mowing

Randolph County


With the warm weather and Spring rains, the photograph above is indicative of the images I see around my community these days as my neighbors scramble to stay ahead of the growing grass. Odell Routh, owner of Routh Oil Company in Lineberry, North Carolina, south of Greensboro, takes a break Saturday morning from his business to mow the road banks near his station.

(photographs copyright 2009 by Dan Routh)

Purple Iris

Family, Flowers, Randolph County

(photograph copyright 2009 by Dan Routh)

I live in my great-grandfather’s house on the family farm in Grays Chapel, North Carolina, just south of Greensboro. My immediate family has lived on that farm for almost one hundred years. A lot of the plants and flowers around our house date back to or are part of the original root stock from those planted by my grandparents and great-grandparents. For instance, we have a huge English boxwood and a magnolia that have to be at least a hundred years old each. Outside of our bay window is a flower bed full of iris transplanted from my grandmother’s garden. They are an old fashioned variety and are now at their annual full bloom.