Only a week after landing back in Newfoundland via the ferry, Isy needed to visit her friend in St. John's and I thought heading to the capital for my friend Rosie's birthday sounded like a fantastic idea. |
With both of them busy the first day, I was left on my own to go explore whatever I wanted in the exciting St. John's area. Recently I'd been seeing more posts of abandoned Newfoundland buildings that I didn't recognize. Usually it's Red Cliff, Fort Amherst, and the S.S. Kyle on rinse and repeat, but now there were things like a flower shop, a small boat and a pig farm. I decided to go about seeing this pig farm. Pulling up outside a busy bakery, there wasn't much snow on the ground and I was able to duck into some trees and skirt around the parking lot towards the farmland clearing. |
The first building was a tall, wooden structure with stairs leading up to the main area. Walking inside, some pre-teens clearly had a good time helping out with drywall demolition. Into the next room, the hallway totally messed with how I think about abandoned building safety. I always thought even if a floor was soft or poorly-built, there would be supports or only a small fall - except here there was a whole collapsed space that was as long and wide as two plywood sheets. Taking a couple pictures of this scene and looking back at said pictures, I can now see the water below gently swirling as I move between the files on my computer. I would not want to be the person who discovered this weak spot. |
A big ol' campus of buildings with no one else around, on a fine winter's day with the yellowed grasses that I love. It doesn't get much better than this, even if various mayors have been calling for site demolition for years. |
This property hasn't been a working pig farm for nearly 20 years, with the province owning it in this vacant state for many of those years. Portugal Cove's mayor took to the CBC 7 years ago telling the province that they need to tear down these buildings because they're a hazard, teens are hanging out, and he'd like to see the property cleared and brought back to its natural state. At a cost of $5 million, the province instead went with erecting a chain link fence around the two land parcels. |
I crossed over to the farm's western parcel, where there were about eight metal-roofed sheds all of the same dimensions and all lined up. Walking into one of them and through a couple, I found various corrals and enclosures. |
Continuing on, the roof stability varied and consequently so did the headroom. Crouching down and ducking beneath the curving roof, it didn't look like a fire had damaged any part of these buildings, like some of the other buildings I'd already passed. |
Attempting to climb one metal grain silo and failing, I went back to the first one, where I managed to pull myself up. This was a much better view of the overall property. I thought about stepping on to the roof as these were some of the more stable sheds, but there was still a missing section nearby and the metal panels didn't feel safe all. I stuck to my grain silo ladder, holding on with one hand and pressing the camera shutter button with the other. |
The area between the sheds had these other enclosures where I couldn't help but think of building makeshift ramps, or simply sawzalling the rails off in order to have a nice handrail at home. I guess bike riders in the capital aren't that desperate though. |
Weigh scale.
Continuing on, the last few sheds were a total mess, where it was hard to even get inside. I couldn't tell if this was vandalism, wind, decay, or scavenging (aka. the four elements of small town, open-ass abandoned buildings). |
In that CBC video from 7 years ago about how the mayor wanted this place torn down, reporter Leah Balass stated that the pig farm had recently suffered two fires. And then in a more recent article from June of 2019, you can see the first wooden building completely destroyed by fire. God do kids love setting buildings on fire in rural Canada. |
Anyway, I was happy to see it, especially before they burned down yet another building. Afterwards I celebrated by going to local landmark Moo Moo's Ice Cream Shop for the first time, after having seen it near Rawlins Cross for over a decade. Following that, Rosie had finished up whatever she was doing this morning & we were about to head up the shore. |
