Anyone have an idea of how Leslie came to be a pilot. Was he a pilot in WWII?

The Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture shoot aerial photos of pretty much the whole state from time to time, going back in some cases to 1938. The farm is located about 2 miles south and 5 miles east of the city of Truman, Minnesota, on county road 148.

In 1938, the landing strip, T hanger, and metal building were not there yet.

In the photo taken in 1954, the T hanger and landing strip are plainly there.

By 1962 a second metal building had been added and the shelter trees had been torn up and new ones planted closer in to make more land available for farming. The air strip is gone.

The MNDNR site has a wealth of historic aerial photos of Minnesota and the immediate border areas.

Using the clues provided by jsmakbkr I believe this is what's left of Claude's Farm. The driveway is the correct shape, the house and long metal building are still there but not much else. The runway strip is a slightly different color than the rest of the grass.

I was really hoping to see an old two tone green car up on blocks in the outback but no such luck.

It must be early spring because the willows are turning green and the remains of the snow pile are still melting in the field across the road. I'll bet the bulldozer makes a heck of a snow plow.

[Another clue is where it says "April 27" in the caption. -Dave]

I see a Tee-shaped building and was wondering what it could be. Then while looking though an aviation magazine from the late 1940s, I saw plans for a rural single-plane hangar. I enjoy it when several seemingly unrelated things come together to give a clearer picture of something.

A 1940 plat map of Nashville Township in Martin County, Minnesota, shows the adjacent parcels then owned by A.C. (Claude) Boler, Hugh Boler, A.M. Boler, and Merrill Boler. Claude's 80-acre parcel with the farmstead and the airstrip is the western half of the southwest quadrant of section 16. Claude also owned the 40-acre parcel just across the road from his farmstead, in the immediate foreground (the northwest quadrant of the northwest quadrant of section 21). Google Earth shows that cost-effective farming has displaced most of the beauty of the farmstead. Some, but not all, of the old farmstead site is now cultivated, and there is a livestock containment facility across the road on the old south 40.

Everything from this excellent Kodachrome batch was done with taste, class and simplicity. Even their plot of land!

The red airplane from the earlier image is also visible too. It appears to be still parked where it was in the other image.

It also looks like the green DeSoto car from the previous image is visible through the trees.

I would assume the strip of green on the right is the airfield.

What is he flying? From the artifact in the top right it looks like a storage shed.

[Top right, or top left? Here's the plane. - Dave]

I'm seeing a pretty distinctive splotch of green behind those trees in the driveway.

[Yes, it's right where they left it in this photo. - Dave]

Dave, this was one of your better acquisitions. The quality of this group of Kodachromes just keep getting better.

And they had crop circles back then, too!