Inheriting a farm

[FireFighterZero]

Mmmmm....Butler bins.

I like Butler bins.

 

[flushcut]

Lots of old tools....I will post picts later of some that are head scratchers.

I think I see your new hand saw Farmer Gary!

 

[flushcut]

Mmmmm....Butler bins.

I like Butler bins.

See Gary. You'll be speaking Farmer before you know it.

 

[treebilly]

So when can I come down to visit?

 

[Burnham]

This is going to be fun to watch, Gary. You are blessed, and of course at the same time cursed, with what you have now ahead of you .

 

[pantheraba]

No Corvette yet... But it did come with a Kubota tractor and also Granddaddy's 1953 Case tractor which my cousin and I rebuilt. I'll try to squeeze some pictures in of that later. I did find an anvil I'll see if I can get that picture up.

 

[pantheraba]

Rich....I am probably gonna need some folks to come visit....that way I will stop working long enough to fish or shoot or whatever. I remember Dad being down here a lot and I'd ask him if he went fishing yet...usually it was, "no, been busy". I haven't fished in years...will have to try it again I reckon.

Yep, B...it'll be a balancing act here and at home for sure.

 

[pantheraba]

That one picture with the anvils that shows "5iUS" (I think) is actually from an old pickaxe I found....I guess it's a wanna be anvil.

 

[pantheraba]

We have at least 18-25 large, old pecan trees....often shedding goodish size limbs...especially this time of year when the nuts are getting some size. I spent the first 2 days here pulling limbs and cutting beaver dams.

 

[pantheraba]

The main pond is too full...beavers have wrecked Grandaddy's system of controlling the water level. We are having to stop gap while trying to parse out a new system.

 

[pantheraba]

There is an pole barn where we keep the Kubota...it's borrowed right now by my cousin....he needed to use the scoop to move dirt for his son and then dropped it off at our tractor rebuild fellow...a fellow probably in his 80's...at least mid 70's...that still rebuilds anything tractor. It's a little Kubota but useful in its own way. Pole barn detritus...the barn has some rotten timbers...another project.

 

[pantheraba]

And here is the lay of the land....cotton fields, pecan trees, pond canals, dirt roads, neighbors house way off on the right.....

 

[pantheraba]

more lay

 

[pantheraba]

This is the east wall of the shop...the first one we will rebuild. My cousin already replaced the south wall.

At first I couldn't remember why I took so many picts of the tin wall....then I remembered that if you look closely, you can see where Grandaddy made notes on the tin over the years.

 

[pantheraba]

And now I can start showing "stuff" from the shop....a huge variety of tools and paraphenalia. Here's the first batch...then off to bed.

 

[pantheraba]

And the last of the first batch:

 

[flushcut]

Super cool Gary! I am happy for you.

 

[treesmith]

Cool, Gary! If only property could be moved....

We were in Hahira two weeks ago for a funeral. A good 10° warmer than here!

 

[vharrison]

Wow, amazing just amazing.

Who has been keeping the grass mowed? That alone is a big job might take a good part of a day. The property is just beautiful.

I could go in your grandaddy's shop and just stand there for a long time, looking at stuff.

 

[pantheraba]

Gigi... You hit on an interesting point. It's critical to keep that grass kept up. My folks were good about setting that up. My cousin that lives down here about maybe quarter to a half mile away keeps up the area around the home place and the shops. He lives on the next dirt road over and his sister lives across the road from him. They both help take care of my one remaining aunt, the last of the four girls, that lives between them and our home place. Aunt Jewell is a very tough cookie. She's about 90 years old now and had been having a rough time and had been put in a supposedly very good personal care home nearby. But with covid and all that was tough for them to get to see her because they wouldn't allow visitors in and they could only visit each day through the window. Supposedly someone would check on her once an hour all day but she took a fall and no one checked on her for 10 hours. They were livid and she was adam that she was going home. She said get me out of this place I'm going to stay in my house I don't care what. And she's staying in her home right now just up the road from me. Refuses to have anybody hover over her and won't let the family stay with her overnight. She was in a wheelchair at the personal care facility and she's gotten back to using her walker again now that she's home again.

The fellow we sold the 5 acres to and the neighbor across the street both have hunting rights on the property in exchange for keeping up the grass around the log cabin and the field up to the home place....where the dragline is. So between the all of them the grass stays cut. They've been real dependable about keeping it cut and the limbs for the pecan trees picked up and the pine cones picked up which is a never-ending battle really. It's worked out real well so far.

 

[pantheraba]

And I understand about the shop... It seems like every time I go in there I can discover something I hadn't seen before and puzzle about what it might have been used for. I sorted out the tools and paraphernalia on that East wall and put them aside so that once we get it put back together I'm going to try to keep the flavor of the shop for other folks to enjoy.
I mentioned to Alex at one point that maybe we just needed to tear the shop down to build a new one on the slab and he looked at me like I was crazy. And I'm glad he did. As a boy he used to enjoy going in the shop and he wants his kids to have that same experience I think. So we're going to try to keep the old run down, hillbilly looking thing but make it dependable and safe and somewhat more organized inside than it was.

We'll take the interesting stuff and put it back on display and the boys can enjoy at some point trying to figure out what really happened in that place. I've got granddaddy's old welder and is forge up at my house near Atlanta. I think I'm going to need to get them back down here and put them where they used to be now. I'll let Kyle help me figure out how to get that welder running and maybe I can do some stick welding like I used to watch him do when I was five or six.

The junk outside the shop is stuff I am setting aside to throw away. It's normally real neat and clean around the shop so I'll try to get it back to that point when I can.

 

[Bermy]

Thanks for sharing this with us...what a jewel, water on the property, big trees, sheds and cottages!
If you can figure out the maintenance, which it seems you have a head start on already...almost a utopia.

 

[pigwot]

What a great retreat from the city... And to have all those memories and family history is great.

 

[gf beranek]

There's always the 'other' option... sub-divide and retire.

 

[lxskllr]

Or alternately ag preservation. Dunno how common that is, but we have it up here. You get paid for keeping farms undeveloped. Not enough to retire by itself, but it's a decent chunk of money.