The plan for today is to go to the farm and keep working on getting the house torn down/apart. Jeff and the mexican guys that work with him went last week and started tearing down stuff. I couldn't believe it when I saw that there was absolutely no insulation in that house at all. I could not imagine living in that house in the winter of 1910 when the house was built.
We are trying to salvage all the wood that we can to use in the new market. Some of the wood Jeff took down last week was used on the pump house to close up the eaves part of the roof. After Christmas we will try to get the old paint scraped off and repainted. Jeff is wanting to stucco some rocks on the outside of the well house. I think that would look great!!
Jeff and I went up with Sarah and Norah yesterday after a family get together and it was just the sweetest sight of him in the strawberry patch with the girls. Sarah was riding his back because we had an incident with a mud puddle and Norah was tagging along beside them. Both girls were talking just as hard as they could. Norah spotted the flower blooms on the strawberry plants and in a cute little 3 yr old voice was saying oh look at the little flower. I explained to her that if she left it alone a strawberry would grow there. She was so excited but she also wanted the flower but I had to remind her that if she left it alone that it would get bigger and juicer and she could eat it later. At that point she licked her lips and said yum-I couldn't help but laugh. I can see now that we are going to have a hard time keeping her from eating all of our profits haha.
I am happy that the girls are excited about the farm. This is a dream "job" for us but at the same time it is creating family memories that these girls won't forget and will be telling their children about one day. This is what we want to create for other families-a day of memories. Most of my childhood memories are from my maternal grandfather's farm and I loved it. Once I got into those awkward pre-teen years the farm lost interest but until then I was as happy as a pig in mud. I could play in the field all day and get as dirty as I wanted. I could make a playhouse in the woods lined with tobacco sticks and use the tobacco sheets as walls hanging from the bushes.My favorite memory would be going to the pond with grandpa after dinner where he had a pond full of fish that he would feed. As a child, I thought he was magical because the fish would honestly follow him around the pond waiting on scraps of bread. It felt like a special time just between me and him. I now have my own fish pond and in the spring the first thing the nieces want to do is go feed the fish. I even have one bass in particular-the female that will float in one spot directly in front of me and wait for the bread to come her way. She is also a little greedy and will run the other fish off if I'm not careful enough to keep food coming her way in a steady stream. The girls love this!!
I also remember going to the store with my grandfather. This was a huge deal when I was a child. Going to the store meant a papersack of penny candy and playing. The "store" was where everyone congragated at some point during the weekend to catch up with each other. Most kids today would be bored with what was one of the best times of my life. We would go in and grandpa would get a soda and a nab and I would get to fill up my tiny sack with candy. Grandpa would catch up with the other grandpa's and I would play with the other kids outside. When someone left it wasn't long before someone else showed up. I heard stories about my parents, aunts, and uncles as they grew up and how I reminded someone of a certain relative. And there was also the inevitable, "I remember this one time...." That is the best way to start a story in my opinion. At the time I didn't notice that there were very few if any at all grandma's at the store. Now I see it was a way to give them a break from the grandkids. After a "visit" we would jump back into the old truck and if it were warm enough I would get to ride on the back. No danger of an accident because I don't think grandpa ever drove above 20 mph in his life.
A lot of parents these days are too focused on spending tons of money to entertain the kids when simple things that don't cost much will give them a memory that they never will forget. I have the most fantastic memories and most of them cost nothing more than a quarter or slice of bread. We want families to bring their kids to the farm to learn about the bees, the flowers, the fruits and vegetables and to sit down at a picnic table and eat a juicy warm strawberry that they just picked together. We want families to come sit in the rocking chairs on the porch and talk about the weather, whose garden was doing well, what's going on at church, or who is expecting a new baby. We want to transport everyone back to a simpler time in life.
It is going to take a lot of hard work and we probably won't be filthy rich in cash value from it but we will give our family and hopefully other families memories that they will cherish for a lifetime.
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