Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

Most every fall the dog and I make it over to the back ridge to the old homestead.  The original house, built back in the 1800s when the property was first homesteaded, is no longer there, of course.  But this little house is there.   In front of the house is the fallen pecan tree.  When I came here 19 years ago the pecan was standing proud and tall, but about ten years ago it was blown over in a storm.  This half of the tree, which had roots still in the ground, survived and has produced pecans every year without fail.  This year I noticed the leaves look diseased.  That may, I hope, be due to the drought and insect damage over the course of the summer.  We will see how it does this coming spring.   The house itself, probably built in the early 1900s, is over 100 years old, and has become more and more dilapidated over the years.  When I came here the doors shut semi-securely and the siding was still attached.    The barn...

For some reason this always fascinates me so I will go ahead and post about it. On the ridge back behind us hubby actually owns the original homestead that his great grandfather (I think) built here back in the late 1800s. This is a picture of it. The middle building is the house, the building on the right was used as a chicken shed and the building on the left was...I dunno, I forget. There is a barn, but it's off to the left of the pic a bit. The large tree on the left was a pecan tree, but it was demolished in the Jan 07 ice storm, a heartbreak to me. The pecans were really good, if you could get any from the varmints. The fallen tree is also a pecan and is actually still alive, it bears pecans every year. The property has not always been in the family. Back in the early 1900s it was sold to two sisters who actually lived on it and farmed it up until 1968. A few years after that time one of the daughter's of one of the sisters sold it back to my husband because she...