Family Archive — Buck Creek, Kentucky
Nana & Papa's
Farm
A full-stack platform for a 300-acre Kentucky property — photo archive, conditions tracker, expense feed, and maintenance coordination, built for a family, not a business.
nanaandpapas.com
The brief
Nana & Papa's Farm is a 300-acre property in Buck Creek, Kentucky — built by hand by Charles Walton and held in a family trust. The family wanted a site that could hold the story of the land and give spread-out family members a shared place to keep photos and leave memories, with no technical barriers to contributing.
The approach
The hero pulls actual family photos from Google Drive and scrolls them as a living collage — three rows at different speeds, getting richer with every upload. Behind it: a conditions tracker where anyone can report something broken and others update it when they visit; a live expense feed connected to the trust's financial account; a maintenance request flow that emails contractors directly; and trust-wide email notifications so every family member hears when something significant happens.
What was built
Living photo collage
The hero pulls actual family photos from Google Drive and scrolls them in three rows at different speeds. It gets richer every time someone uploads.
Conditions tracker
Any family member can report something broken — a fence, a pipe, a structure. Others update the status when they visit. The full list stays sorted by priority so the family knows what to tackle first.
Live expense feed
Connected to the trust's financial account. Expenses paid from the account appear in the dashboard automatically — no one has to manually log what the farm costs.
Maintenance requests
Family members can submit a maintenance request from the site. It emails the relevant contractor directly to initiate work — no phone tag, no coordinator needed.
Trust-wide notifications
When something notable happens — a repair is completed, a major expense is logged, a condition is reported — the site emails everyone in the trust so no one is out of the loop.
Per-user family accounts
Seven family members seeded at launch. Any member can invite others with a generated invite modal — site URL, email, and initial password in one copy-paste.
Google Drive photo gallery
Photos upload directly to a Google Drive Shared Drive. Masonry grid with lightbox, newest-first, and each photo credited to the family member who uploaded it.
Guestbook
Open to anyone — name and a message, stored in Postgres, live on the page. A record of who's been out there and what they remembered.
State of the Farm
Shared panels for Conditions, Expenses, Work Log, and Updates — plus user management and photo attribution settings. The whole family stays on the same page about the property.
The result
The site is a living platform for the property — not just an archive but an operational tool. The family tracks conditions, monitors expenses from the trust account, coordinates repairs through the site, and stays informed without anyone having to make calls or send group texts. It grows with the property and the people who care for it.
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