Homestead Memories

Hi, folks! It's June here.

I'm up here at the homestead for Mother's Day, keeping mom company and generally being a little angel of sunshine. (Or at least, not a pillar of sullenness like usual.)

It's always interesting coming back up here. I know it's the family farm, where grandpa and then my mom grew up, but it's also where I grew up. When I was a kid, I'd come up here and stay with my grandparents for days or even weeks at a time. I'd revert to some Mowgli-esque
creature of dirty jeans, tangled hair, and a wild look, stalking through the woods with my notebook and BB gun.

That means that there's barely a square foot of this farm that doesn't have some memory for me.

This is the tree where my brother built a tree fort, waaaay up in the branches. I was too little to climb up there, and I was always jealous.

This is where the kennel used to be, where I picked out my own aussie puppy, Speckles, when she was just a little grunting milky ball of fluff and spots.

This is where I used to hunt for old bones that the cougar left behind- I once found a pile that had a whole coyote skeleton and most of two sheep. I still have the old coyote skull, quietly shedding its teeth somewhere in the garage.

These blasts from the past were some of my brother's and then my favorite toys as kids.

Somewhere around here is where we buried my childhood cat, Bruno.

This is the Bushwhacker. I was riding it with my grandpa when he mowed, and he ran over a sapling and shredded it. Thus, the name.

This is where I found out why you should never let someone smack a donkey while you're sitting on it.

This is where I watched Rio get born in the middle of the night.

This is where I found out that the only way sheep will believe that your bucket is empty, is if they knock you down, steal it, and look for themselves.

This is where I had a rope swing set up. If you look very closely, you can still see what's left of the rope.

Every time I come here, it's a bit like spending a day or two in the past. Everywhere I go, I see little reminders of my days here as a kid- even if there's only a patch of grass left where my fort once was, or the cherry tree I climbed is just a stump. Now that my parents are changing so much here on the farm, a whole new layer of memories are being overlaid on the same land. It's a rare opportunity to see the passage of time.