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6harness, and miscellaneous shop tools. Sadly, it was a common sight back then%u2014and it%u2019s not that uncommon today.When I was young, I was indifferent about barns. Then, as I grew into adulthood, particularly when I started working on photography projects, I%u2019d find my eyes drawn to the barns I happened across. As I admired their bold, dark silhouettes against the sky, I began to appreciate, more fully, how each had been designed and built by locals%u2014to meet the unique needs and budget of a particular farmer. As I scrutinized Indiana%u2019s barns, I enjoyed the quirky, jig-sawed wooden air vents, and the fading, painted name and date of an original owner. I was intrigued when I spotted, high on a roof, a row of once-impressive, now-rusting, zinc-coated ventilators, or an oddly bent lightning rod still supporting a lavender-colored glass ball. I was intrigued with the abandoned wagons, massive timbered beams, wobbly hayloft ladders, inexplicable tools, and broken implements. I even found a dignified beauty in the rough, irregular, vermin-gnawed siding. Now, when I pass by a lonely, derelict barn, I%u2019m engulfed with an awareness of the great significance of barns%u2014those onceubiquitous and vital structures%u2014to the essence of Indiana%u2019s history. Eventually my wife, Lynn, and I knew we needed to honor Hoosier barns in a book%u2014this book. Because it took more than barns to make a farm, you%u2019ll also see other important remnants of farm life which are often overlooked: chicken coops, corn cribs, sheds, silos, storage bins, concrete corner posts, old tractors, and other out-dated equipment.This isn%u2019t the first Indiana barn book to be published, nor will it be that last. But Lynn and I believe it%u2019s the most emotionally moving because it shows how very many farm buildings are being lost. In fact, a number of the structures on these pages disappeared before this book went to press. It%u2019s a regrettable fact of progress that, as each year passes, more and more of the buildings on these pages will vanish. Twenty-first-century farms simply aren%u2019t operated the same way they once were, and the old barns have outlived their usefulness. Designed for fairly specific purposes, they%u2019re now obsolete, and it%u2019s not cost-effective to keep them in good repair. Of course, a handful of these barns and outbuildings will be spared. Some were very much in use when I shot them, and they will continue to serve their owners for years to come, while, here and there, one will be rejuvenated and adapted to a new and creative purpose%u2014transformed into a home, an antique store, perhaps a community building. But there just aren%u2019t enough viable alternatives, or funds, to save the majority of Indiana%u2019s aging barns. And the small outbuildings are even less likely to be preserved. Once so common and uncountable, they continue to fade away one, by one, by one, by one%u2026Already, there are countless farmsteads that are now completely gone%u2014plowed under and essentially forgotten. According to official records, there are 100,000 fewer farms operating in Indiana today than in 1950%u2014a staggering figure%u2014and my Aunt Hon and Uncle Paul%u2019s place is among them. A tornado took out the barn in the 1970s then, later, a fire consumed the house. Today, there%u2019s absolutely nothing left but the land itself. Their farm has become a memory%u2014existing only in a few faded black-and-white snapshots in my cousin%u2019s scrapbook. Ghost Barns of Indiana is a tribute to all the Hoosier farms that have been lost, to the barns and outbuildings that comprised them, to those people who grew up around them, to all those who wished they had, and to everyone who appreciates the pride and importance of what once was.John Bower