My parents lived on the same farm for 70 years, a mile from where my father's parents had lived since 1905. If you think a suburban home can fill up, just ima

My parents lived on the same farm for 70 years, a mile from where my father's parents had lived since 1905. If you think a suburban home can fill up, just imagine a place with all kinds of outbuildings, and two adults who having grown up dirt poor in the depression, could see potential value in almost anything. But when my father became too incapacitated by age to maintain the place, they bought a new townhouse in the small prairie town 7 miles from the farm, selected the things that they needed and wanted to occupy that space, including a few things they thought they should pass on to their children. Then they sold everything else, including the homestead, at auction. Us kids were permitted to buy anything we wanted personally, of course, but at the auction. Costs for us could come from our eventual inheritance, if necessary (in the end, nothing that valuable went to any of us). A week preparing for the auction, and a morning, and it was all gone. Now in my own retirement, I have been thinking a lot about what happens to our own homestead, and the tools and detritus of a lifetime that it contains. I've been diligently culling things that I know I won't be able to use in the next 20 years (which is probably the most I've got here), either through Craigslist or the like where an item is still of use to someone, or to by disassembling them and recycling the materials (where feasible), or hauling to the landfill (where recycling is not feasible) for those things that are no longer likely to be useful to anyone. But that will still leave a lot of stuff. Multiple looms, spinning wheels and associated equipment and fiber material from my wife; innumerable tools and machines that I still use regularly in the orchard, woods, garden, and wood and metal shops; a library of thousands of volumes. We have a neighbor 15 years older than us who, faced with this problem and no children who wanted their homestead, which they, like us, had built up from bare land over 40 years, found a much smaller place, moved what they wanted there, and sold the homestead, furnishing included. to a younger couple wanting to start a rural life. I like that idea ... make it someone else's problem, but also boon. My own kids will get and have enough that we can afford to sell at a discount if someone who really values the place and supporting materials comes along.