Back Again - Wow - This could get to be a habit!!!

 Went South for the Grandson's 3rd birthday this month.  That boy has more toys than Santa Claus and with such a large family in the local area he's bound to get more.  I think my daughter-in-law said there were 34 people there.  I'm still learning all the names?!?  Had a good time and we really enjoyed the short stay.  Got there on a Thursday and left on Monday.  Anywho - on the way down we passed these cotton fields that were almost ready for harvest.  They were beautiful and looked like fields of snow.  Lots of people around who have never seen cotton growing.

 These two pics were taken through the truck window while we were hauling down I-75 through Georgia.

 Along the way back we stopped for gas and there was a cotton field right next to the station.  I asked the station owner about the field and he said it was his and they were getting ready to harvest and process cotton.  So, I asked if I could take a stem so the grandkids could see it close up and he said I could so I did.

I remember Mom telling me about working in the cotton fields when she was a young girl, living in Arkansas.  She said that it was the way they earned enough money to buy a pair of shoes and some clothes for school.  Mostly went barefoot in the summer.  Mom said that at the end of the day her fingers were bloody and so sore she didn't think she'd be able to work the next day but work she did.  It was tough times and she came from a large family of 13 kids.  I can't even imagine HAVING to work that hard when I was a kid.  I remember bailing hay in the summer, driving tractor to plow, disc, plant and cultivate the fields where I worked.  It was sun-up to sun-down and not much else in between cept sleep.  I have to admit though, we ate like kings, all three meals. 

Lisa, our daughter-in-law, had decorated for Halloween and had quite a trail up to the front door.  I happened to admire one of her decorations and she gave her extra one.  I guess you could say we adopted it and brought it home.  However, it's a low cost adoption and it don't take up much room or eat much - Yuk Yuk. 

Happy Halloween Ya'll

Very Busy September

Wow - what a month.  Cathy and I had made plans to travel to my sister Diane's in Illinois to bury our younger sister PJ's ashes in the family plot.  However - along comes hurricane Irma.  Since we're in Tennessee we figured it would have no effect on us but we got a call from my son, Stephen who lives in Spring Hill, Florida and wanted to bring his family up to weather the storm.  We told him to "come on up - knowing that our other grandson Lil Kai would be with them.  Ah - what a crowd.  We had our youngest daughter, Kristy and her two kids (9 and 4 y/o) and Steve, Lisa and Kai (almost 3y/o) in a three bedroom house, thankfully with two bathrooms.  It took them 18 hours to get out of Florida but by using back roads and keeping topped off with gas, when available, they made it.  They stayed 4 days until it was relatively clear then started back down.  Steve manages the Tampa Hooters Restaurant and wound up coordinating operations from here via the internet.  By the time he got back, I believe Hooters was up and running.  Thankfully all they lost was electric power but it was back on by the time they got home.  The same day Steve and his family left to return to Florida, Cathy and I left for Illinois only we had an 8 hour drive and not 12-18 like Steve.
You could sure tell we were in Illinois rather than Tennessee - - - -

Soybeans and corn almost all the way.  Going through Kentucky and southern Indiana we saw Tobacco growing also but once we got into Illinois that was it.  We stayed with my Sister at her place in Troy for the duration.  While we were there, Kinmundy, our old home town of 900 people- - - -

Well make that 800 - guess it's gotten smaller since I left for the Navy in Aug 1965.  But it's still a neat little town.  Anyway, they were holding the annual festival at Ingram's Log Cabin Village out by the C&EI Rail Road lake.  Irma Ingram started this village back when I was a young lad going to high school with her son, Bob.  In fact, I even got to number some of the logs on a cabin we found that was to be moved to Irma's location.  All these cabins were found locally and some of them even had local descendants of the original cabin owners still living in the area.

This is Cathy taking a break in front of one of the early 1800's cabins.  This one is special because the cabin guide was someone we had known all our lives and was a life-long Kinmundy resident, Eleanor Tate.  Eleanor, dressing her part, is 81 years young and has been assisting with this festival for a long time.  She is accompanied by my wife, Cathy and my Sister, Diane.

As you probably noticed in the first photo, this cabin has an added room on the right side which is a bedroom.  In those early days that was quite an extravagance.  The bedroom is pictured below.

 The next three photos are of a doctors cabin where he practiced medicine on the local folk.  He lived

where he worked like so many other artisans of that day did.

A few of his herbs, chemicals and medical supplies were kept on shelves.  I particularly like that little brown jug sitting there just waiting to be tasted, maybe....

I wanted to show the corner detail on this cabin because almost all of these cabins have what is called "Dovetail" notching which locks the corners in once the a log is placed on top.  

 

The pictures on the lighted table are of people who actually lived in this cabin back in the day.  I like the white-wash on the walls and ceiling, it makes it a lot lighter inside compared to cabins without it.

The above three pics are of a cobblers cabin.  He lived here with his wife and eight (8) children.  You can see some cobbler tools around the cabin and interestingly, this cabin also had a stove.  I was astounded when our guide mentioned the 8 kids until she pointed out the ladder to the loft area where the kids slept.  I bet that could get to be crowded.

These three photos (above) are of a school house/church cabin.  Doesn't look like there were many students or parishioners but back then, this area was very sparsely populated. A couple of things to note about this cabin - first it doesn't have a fireplace, it has a stove instead and was vented out above the blocked-in window.  Also, the logs are rounded instead of being hand-hewed flat.  This usually means that the corners are more than likely saddle notched where one log lays in a notch atop the next etc.  Anyway - only one more to show - - -

I believe this was the only two-story cabin on the site.  I remember back when I knew Bob, they were just reconstructing these and a two story was attempted.  But due to a rotten base log, (unbeknownst to them) the 2nd story collapsed while under rebuild.  That cabin was left unassembled and the good logs were recycled into other cabins.   Ah - memories.  And that pretty well covers the trip.  We had a good time, renewed some old acquaintances and spent some time in the old home town.

SURPRISED I'm back so soon - Huh!!

It's been kind of a slow week around here.  The grandkids have started back to school and Kristy has started her college certification course.  Cathy is auditing a college course on Tennessee History and I'm lollygagging around.  Actually I had a molar surgically removed on Tuesday but was back to normal that evening.  Except for having to rinse my mouth 3-4 times a day, it was actually not as bad an experience as I had expected.  They used really good drugs!!
The temps have been dropping pretty low during the evenings, as low as 50 last night and It's supposed to go even lower next week.  Don't know - but looks like we may be skipping fall this year and going straight into winter.
I have been putzing around being crafty for the week.  A friend sent me some Jasper as a gift.  It was really beautiful and when I admired it they sent me a piece.  They currently live in Hawaii but have some property in Georgia which is where the Jasper is from.  They are gonna send me a bigger piece when they get back to Georgia again.  In talking with them I found out that they really like deer and actually have deer on their property that they feed.  So - I decided to make them a leather carving of a deer, frame it and send it to them as a gift.

The frame is made of Hemlock which is the same wood as my house is made from.  Anywho, I hope they like it.
I was passing through the kitchen earlier and came across this  - - -

I don't know where it came from but I can tell ya where it's going.  Apparently while I was busy in the barn building a picture frame for my project, Cathy was busy making an apple pie.  UUUUMMM
UUUUMMM!!  Add a little ice cream and man oh man - Dairy Queen ain't got nothing on us.  Short and really sweet but I was here but then KILROY may have been here to.  Til next time...

I'm Alive - I'm Alive

Yea - we're still here on the mountain in Tennessee.  I've just been lazy and haven't posted to our blog in quite sometime - as I've been reminded several times.  So Barb, this one's for you.

I stepped out onto our back porch a few days back to enjoy my morning cup of java and this is what met my eyes

That 2nd mountain range in the center of the pic is Kentucky, just about the Static area.  Temps have been cooling in the mornings but the ground temp is still warm so it produces a ground fog that slowly rises until the sun gets high enough to cause it to dissipate.  Kinda makes me feel like I'm above the clouds. Just thought I'd share.
I've been continuing to work on my 1989 Ford Bronco that we bought new back in 1988 for around $22K.  That was quite a chunk of change for a car back then but it's still going.  I had the engine overhauled around 188K miles and just recently had the original transmission rebuilt.  I'm now getting ready to put another rear end in it and with just a few more tweaks, she'll be really mechanically sound and reliable.  I'm gonna let Kristy, our daughter, use it as her vehicle til she is able to get her own.  The a/c doesn't work but that'll come later.  Right now we need a 2nd vehicle and this is it.

If you've followed previous seasons on this blog you will know that this time of year is canning season, and this year is no different.  It seems to be a frenzy of work for a couple of months when all the fruits and vegetables ripen.  We typically can tomatoes (lots and lots of tomatoes), green beans, corn, pickles (dill and sweet), beets (if we can find them) and some apples for pie filling and peaches.
So far this year we have canned 144 jars of stuff and that doesn't include the vegetables that we have frozen in vacuum packages.  That may sound like a lot be we give some of this away to our relatives  who live in Illinois and Florida and other friends and neighbors.  However, that's not to say we don't eat a lot of it either.  We use a lot of tomatoes for spaghetti sauce and salsa.

I'll list them from left top to right bottom.  Dill pickles - corn - whole tomatoes - green beans - sweet pickles, banana peppers and tomato sauce - tomato soup, vegetable soup, spaghetti sauce, apples and beets - spaghetti sauce and salsa - lastly peaches.


In addition to canning, Cathy does a lot of cooking and hates to use store-bought products, like ragu and such.  So she begins from scratch just like her Grandma did.  It takes all day to cook the whole tomatoes down into a sauce but boy does the house smell good.  Anyway, she uses a lot of spices when she cooks so she found a spice rack, which holds about half of her spices.

 





  She had mentioned that she needed another spice rack and would really like to have one to match what she already had.  I found one of her older scrub boards that had been broken and repurposed it for her.

Now she has enough storage space for her spices - for now that is.  So - that's it for my latest post and I sure hope I can do better in the future keeping our blog more current.  Til next time -----

Two Month Hiatus

Well, I guess I've ignored our blog long enough and now it's time to bring it up to date. January was a relatively quiet month.  We made a very quick trip to Florida to deliver our Grand daughter's furniture for her new apartment in Tampa. Spent an overnight with my Son in Springchill then headed back to Tennessee.  I know - I know - I said Springchill instead of Springhill and that's what we started calling it after SpringHill started booming.  In my opinion the complexion of Florida has changed sooooo much with the heavy influx of the northerner's.  They brought their typical "cold shoulder - don't get involved attitude" with them and Florida isn't the old, friendly, helpful Florida of the 50's and 60's.  That's one of the reasons we left Florida and relocated to Tennessee.  Now we're seeing more and more Floridians coming to Tennessee during the summer.
     Anyway - in February we had some pretty nice weather which is kinda unusual.  So Kristy and I took advantage of it and went on a couple of arrowhead hunting trips.  Actually we just hiked but looked for arrowheads on the way.  We started down the logging road to the falls to follow the creek down the mountain.

 

This is the view of the falls after we climbed down from the logging road.

This is the "rockhouse beneath the falls

And now you're looking downstream from behind the falls

  The next 3 pics were taken as we hiked or climbed over debris while following the creek down the mountain.  We continued until we encountered another dry creek bed that was coming from back up the mountain so we decided to start the return hike by following this branch. In the process we found a couple of interesting things.

Found this little gal peeking out.  It's Bloodroot and they were all over the place.

This creek was a dry bed so we watched the gravel bed for possible artifacts.  This pottery was our first find.  I personally think it's quite old and predates our modern pottery.  The texture is like baked clay with a dark, patterned outer covering.  Haven't been able to classify it yet but I'm not giving up.

This was our next find and it was pottery again. I think this is more modern and probably from the late 1800's to early 1900's.  It has a sandy clay texture and the lite blue pigment is probably from that period.  However, still haven't confirmed it.

And then we found this.  I know - it's broken but the identifiers are all there.  It's known as a MacCorkle point or arrowhead and is between 6,000 and 8,000 years old.  Hard to believe that you can find something that old but I've got a bunch different points and blades that are even older.  Continuing up the creek we decided to start a more uphill climb and shorten our hike a bit.

As we walked along the cliff bottom, Kristy found a mini cave that was probably being used by critters as shelter.  This cliff face is about 300 feet above the creek we were following.  That pretty much covered our February hike but we did manage to get out again and took Hunter with us.  Lilly was in school but Hunter gets out earlier so we took him with us.

While we were out, Kristy found this artifact.

If you look closely you can see a wavy pattern across the edge of this chalcedony piece.  It has been chipped away (knapped) by a prehistoric man to fashion a point but it broke off at the base so it was probably just thrown away.  This stuff if pretty hard to work with as opposed to some of the flint or chert we have here on the mountain.  It became part of our collection anyway.  Hope this litany didn't bore you too much.

Just the other morning, Kristy went out on the back porch, which is about 8 feet above ground and when she looked down, she saw this.

At first we thought it was a coyote but it was too large and had too many mixed colors.  After I posted the pic we found out that it is a Coywolf.  The coyotes and wolves have cross bred creating a more aggressive and larger coyote.  This one has been killing our feral cats that hang out around the house.  He taken at least 3 so far but I'm gonna make it his last if he returns.  They have never come this close to the house before. I guess that's enough for now.  Til next time....