| In 2017, like many of the beautiful and stately farm dwellings in the region, this farmhouse has fallen into ruin and disrepair.
The French Busch Homestead on the
Freed-Brohard Road in the dullness of winter...
... to the brilliance of summer foliage
2006
There are several notable farmhouses standing along the Brohard-Freed Road, in an area where Wirt-Ritchie and Calhoun collide, but still holding forth as a working farm is the French Busch house and property, which was built in 1915.
It sprung forth as part of the well-known Hartley oil and gas field.
"This will be the first year I've failed to farm it," said eighty-five-year-old owner Denver Sims, who has owned and lived on the 100 acre farm for 45 years.
"The county line goes through the middle of the place. I've had to pay taxes in two counties," he said.
Sims, a veteran of World War II and son of Walker Sims of Yellow Creek, was a school bus driver for Wirt County, worked in the oil field and farmed.
His wife, Opal Snider Sims, died in 1998. They have seven children. She was the daughter of French and Ella (Snider) Busch.
A Hartley Field falling down oil rig near the Busch Homestead
See "Freed Lives in the Memories of Oldtimers"
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