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A little bit about my farm [1]
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Date: 2025-07-26
My 91 year old sister calls me frequently simply to chat. Lately she’s gotten stuck on the subject of old times. She most certainly recollects some things that I don’t. But with her having lived elsewhere since early adulthood, I know one or two things about this place that she never knew.
As a for instance, I know that this farm went into foreclosure in 1925. For more than a decade afterward, various individuals lived here, grew crops but were evicted after making no payment to the mortgage holder.
Daddy was a school teacher. He didn’t make much money, but he did make some. He bought this place in 1937 from The New York Life Insurance company. And he eventually paid for it.
I consider Daddy to be a casualty of the War in Viet Nam. I was drafted into the Army in 1970 and got as far as the Overseas Replacement Station in Fort Lewis, WA in the spring of 1971. While half dozing waiting to board an outbound plane, I heard my name called. It was The Red Cross. I was informed that Daddy had a heart attack and I had an emergency leave. While on leave, I applied for and received a compassionate reassignment to nearby Fort Campbell, KY. Daddy died later that year.
I was eligible for a Viet Nam era veterans bonus, but did not apply for it. It felt wrong somehow.
When Daddy bought this place, it had a house, a stable and a tobacco barn. The barn in my image is that original tobacco barn. It does not look like it did in the olden days because it’s been greatly re-worked. A tornado once did it considerable harm, but its core is constructed of hewed beams with cross beams connected to those upright beams with wood pegs.
My older brother brought a Ford 5000 tractor here after the tornado. We hooked a log chain to the tractor and to the top of the barn. The tractor’s wheels simply spun. He tried several different directions and got the same reaction. He finally said, “We can’t tear it down. I reckon we’ll have to fix it.”
We did fix it. New roof, new boxing and two new sheds. An opening for Barn Owl’s nest box is on the opposite end.
I decided later that I would build another tobacco barn supported by treated poles set in post holes. Soon after beginning that project, my older brother stopped by to see what I was up to. When I told him my plan he said, “What makes you think you can build a barn? You don’t even have a square up here. The sheets of metal on your roof won’t line up right.”
I did not have a square, but I did have strings long enough to form a right triangle with one side equal to the spacing between my poles. I wasn’t up to explaining the Pythagorean Theorem to my older brother, but the sheets of roofing atop that barn do line up.
After getting my new barn built with the help of that brother and two of his sons, he decided that if I could build a barn, he could too. He used a square and his eyes to align his posts. His barn wasn’t as square as my own.
Altogether, I raised fifty two tobacco tobacco crops on this place and then helped a nephew a couple of years after I stopped raising it myself. At one time, I swapped work with my brother and nephews to strip tobacco. Then along came right wing talk radio. I couldn’t tolerate it. I simply announced that we would no longer swap work on that process. My brother said, “How can you take your tobacco down by yourself and strip it by yourself? The boxes weigh over 200 lbs.”
I did just that for many years and it was 432% easier than listening to one minute of Rush Limbaugh.
When I helped a nephew after giving up my own contract, he knew better than to even turn a radio on while I was helping him.
He retired a few years after me and sold his contract to a neighbor. That neighbor pleaded, “Can I get yall to strip it for me? Yall know how Conwood likes it sorted.”
We didn’t do that.
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