TRAMPIN' THE FARM

Mike and Nellie were going bird hunting here at the farm (9-22), so I threw on a pair of jeans and my hiking boots, grabbed the camera, and tramped along behind them.


Here's a nice late-summer photo of the farm house from beyond the pond. Note the red apples on the tree.


This draw is called "Stove Creek." We pick plums here -- and the deer bed down under the plum trees. You can see the farmyard --the clump of trees on the right side of the photo. And that line running from the farmyard to Stove Creek is actually the boundary between Jack and June's homesteads.


I love this photo taken from June's field. Looking at the two properties as a whole, the farmyard sits in a natural hollow in the center. This side of the hollow was June's homestead, so you can see why it was important to us to make the two farms one again. The barn and the pond sit just inside the boundary. Of course, it didn't matter to my grandparents because the two farms functioned in cooperation.

Although she's mostly white, Nellie has little tolerance for the heat early in the season. Mike carries water and a container so that she can have a drink. Nobie would lap water poured from a bottle or canteen. Nellie says that's just too weird.


Here's a clear picture of the turn I mentioned in a previous post -- where June and Bertha's house was located. The large pine tree is on Dobson Road and marks the place where the access road begins.



And here's a picture showing Dobson Road flowing down to our lane at the left. Note how much the culvert raises the lane. Before the culvert was installed, that boggy low spot was problematic. Sometimes, when I was a child and rode with my dad to the farm in early spring, we would get stuck at this point. Daddy would walk on into the farm, get the little D2 Cat, and pull the pick up out of the mud. "Wouldn't Vance just love this?" a neighbor comments when he admires the culvert. Yes, he would! KW