Life on a Southern Farm

Meet Annie

2008-07-19T09:51:00.004-04:00

Good Morning,
This is Annie.

I raised Annie and Lil' Annie on bottles last spring after both their mothers died.

Annie is just a common goat. No special breed. But she is special to me. Annie actually does not know she is a goat.

I did spoil her as did the rest of the family. My grandson loves Annie and Annie loves him too.

Annie could not understand why she wasn't allowed to live in the house with us.

When we finally fixed all the fence so Annie could not get out,she spent a lot of time like this. With her head through the fence. She knew she would get attention.
BoDog would look at Annie like he couldn't believe she got her head out for about the 15th time for the day.

The other goats knew Annie was the ring leader and followed her everywhere she went.
Annie always had this look that said"why are all this goats following me everywhere?"

Annie led the goats places they weren't suppose to be. Like out of the fence and playing on the hay bales.

Now Annie is a mother. She has 2 babies.

The brown one is a girl and does not like to be petted.
The tan one is a boy and has Annie's sweet personality and loves to be petted.

I hope you enjoyed getting to know Annie a little bit.

Have a great day!

Vegetable of the Day is Brown Crowder Peas

2008-07-17T10:52:00.003-04:00

Good Morning,
This is where I spend my mornings. Picking Brown Crowder Peas, among other vegetables.

I wanted to add about the garden.... we used only compost, manure, and old leaves for fertilizer. We haven't used pesticides either. I am just so proud of the way our hard work is paying off now.

A close up of the peas, bloom, and a Bumblebee.

Peas waiting to be shelled.

Peas shelled.

Peas ready to be ate.

I have 5 gallon bags of crowder peas froze so far. I can just take out the amount to cook from the gallon bag and put the rest back in the freezer. I hope to have many more bags frozen by the end of the week.

I hope you all have a great day.

Meet Jack

2008-07-15T02:18:00.007-04:00

Good Morning,
I know some of you have missed seeing Jack. Today is all about Jack.

Jack is a Mammoth male gelding donkey. He is around 7 years old and has lived here on the farm for 4 years.

Jack is quite the clown at times.

Jack's true love is Belle the Jersey cow. Jack really loves Belle. See more here.

Jack in his Holiday Spirit. Click Here to see more.

Jack is always exploring anything new.

This is Jack smiling. Jack has a permanent home with us because he makes us smile too.

A message from Jack

Have a great day!

The Garden Now and Then

2008-07-13T10:02:00.000-04:00

Good Afternoon,
I just wanted to share with you how 2 months can make a big difference in a garden.
We got a late start this year on the garden. We planted on May 5th.

This is now. July 12th

This tomatoe has grown so fast it is splitting open, since we FINALLY! got some rain in the last couple of weeks.

All the tomatoes appreciated the rain too.

The garden is producing so well. This week I have canned greenbeans(Roma). Froze 16 bags of okra.(Clemson spinless). Pickle 6 jars of pickled okra.

I have silver queen corn ready to pick. Brown crowder peas just starting to get ready. Butterbeans and butterpeas are hanging from the vines. The tomatoes are just starting to ripen. I still have red cabbage, broccoli,cucumbers,squash, and collards also.
I am so grateful for all the fresh vegetables. I even like the process of picking, shelling, canning and freezing.
It is so ful-filling to see our hardwork produce something we can be proud of.

I hope you all have a great day!

Surprise Surprise

2008-07-11T06:34:00.006-04:00

Good Morning,

Snowball (someone put her out on our rural road when she was a kitten and we took her in)

had four little surprises under the house. They sure are cute surprises. We didn't think there was another cat for miles around.
Lionel ( my best friend gave me Lionel when he was a kitten 7 years ago)

has been neutered so he is not the babies Daddy. I have new homes for 2 of the kittens. I plan on keeping the little one out of the basket. She is the sweetest one. Now I have 2 cats to have fixed.

I would love to keep them all but farm man said I can't keep all the goats, all the cows, all the chickens , all the dogs, and all the cats that come to our farm.... I don't see why not, do you?

Have a great day!

Happiness is Six Jars of Green Beans

2008-07-10T06:34:00.006-04:00

Good Morning,

The Garden

Green beans cooking to get ready to pressure can.

Pressure Canner on just the right pressure so as not to blow up me and the house.

The end result. Six Quarts of Pure Happiness!

Have a great day!

Quick and Easy Fresh Summer Vegetable Recipe

2008-07-08T09:12:00.005-04:00

Good Morning,

I wanted to share one of my favorite summer vegetable recipes. It is fast,easy, and good.

All it takes is these fresh vegetables here.

2 cups of fresh cut off the cob corn.
2 cups of diced squash (yellow or zucchini)
2 cups of fresh diced tomatoes (or you can use a large can of dice tomatoes if you don't have fresh) but fresh is so much better!

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in large pan. Add 1/2 of a onion chopped and chopped green or red pepper. Your choice. I use bell pepper and a little hot pepper.
Add all of the vegetables and simmer about 15 minutes. Stir it a good bit because the fresh corn may stick to the bottom of the pan if you don't.

It is so good. This was one of my family's favorite. Matter of fact, I just fixed it last weekend and they still enjoy it. I hope you and your family like it also.

Have a great day!

Drought, Rain, Fish and Chicken

2008-07-07T06:28:00.005-04:00

Good Morning,
The drought has been terrible this summer in Middle Georgia. We finally received around an inch of rain yesterday evening here on the farm. It was wonderful! Do you know that since we planted the garden we have only had about 3/4 of an inch of rain until yesterday? It has been a struggle trying to grow a garden. We have a chance of a shower all week so hopefully we will get more rain. My husband and I have tried to keep the garden irrigated from a little natural pond that is below the barn and it is starting to produce vegetables now.

I will have a recipe tomorrow using all these vegetables.

Annie and the goats. You can see how the pasture was turning brown.

We turned all the chickens out of the pen and they are having fun acting like chickens now.

Even though they are pairing up with some strange duos.
A turken and a golden Polish

The pond's water level is down about 24 inches. There are so many fish in the old pond that we decided to try and catch some to put in the freezer. Our oldest son loves to fish and is good at it. This weekend while him and his girlfriend was visiting, he caught quite a lot of fish. Bass, catfish, and bream.

He is also an expert at cleaning and filleting fish. We ended up with 10 bags of fish to freeze. It will be fish grown without chemicals in the water and a comfort to know where your food has came from. Plus with the vegetables we are growing pesticide free, it makes all the hard work of farm life rewarding.
I am about to go out and pick more green beans. I hope to be canning beans tomorrow.
I will try and make pictures of the canning process too.
Have a great day!

I Found the Enemy

2008-07-04T13:32:00.003-04:00

Hey Everyone,
Did you miss me?? I missed you all. It has been a hectic summer so far. First, my Mother is still in the hospital but seems to be doing fine. My car needs work so I can't get up there to see her right now. It has sort of been one thing after another, if you know what I mean. Things will get better, I am positive.
I fell and broke my camera, so I wanted to see if it would still work. My blog hasn't worked right in several weeks so I decided to change it around. Do you like the new look?

Anyway here is that enemy I found lurking and eating away on the tomatoes.

He went to visit the chickens. The chickens didn't know what to think about him!

This is how the mill pond is looking. Empty looking, isn't it? Billy is working on it trying to shape it up. It will look beautiful soon!

The saw mill is looking good. We haven't had time to cut any lumber yet, though.

The water wheel area is looking good.

I just wanted to update you all and I hope to be back some next week. Our sons are on the way over and I am so grateful to have fresh vegetables from the garden to share with them this weekend. (We still need rain!)
I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend.

Young Dreamers Chapter Ten

2008-07-04T05:02:00.000-04:00

Last Chapter of the Young Dreamers:

Good Morning,

Last week I left you our family had went through a rough period in our lives and came out stronger.
I am trying to think how to explain it to you.
I remember when I was a child and our family had went to the Great Smokey Mountains. We came to a tunnel that went through the mountains. The first tunnel was short. You could see the daylight through the end. Then we came to one that you could tell was long. We entered it and it was dark. It had a sign that said turn on lights. Daddy turned the car lights on and it lite up the tunnel. Then something happened to the car lights and they went out and everything was completely pitch dark. I was frightened. Even though the whole family was going through the tunnel with me, it was dark and I didn't know how long before we would reach light. I know it wasn't long but in my young mind it was forever. Then in the dark, some one's hand reaches and squeezes mine and I knew I wasn't alone and the end was there. Brilliant light from the sun is shining and the a beautiful view of the landscape below is what was at the end of a long dark journey.
I guess that is gushy, but it describes what those years felt like.

Anyway, the house we built here had wooden siding that was not looking so good. Billy had a plan. He is going to redo the outside of the house and use the wood siding on the barn he is building.
Here is Billy and our sons in front of the before house.

Me, Billy and the oldest son in front of before house.

Billy believes in working perfect and fast. He goes to work on a design he has in his mind.

I was working full time off the farm at the time. It was almost as if I went to work one day and came home to something completely different.

Here is Billy and oldest son on the front porch relaxing a little during the overhaul time.

Me and Billy in front of the house right after the overhaul.

When I was looking through the pictures I came up on this. This is an example of one of Billy's finds. He can take something that looks like junk (you can tell by the youngest son's expression, he is wondering about this too!) and make something beautiful out of it. In a short period of time.

Here is the same piece 2 weeks later.

I have to say that I am very proud of our sons. Both went through some rough times, different experiences, but rough. But haven't we all in one time or another gone through some difficult times? It is just different when it is your children going through it. The most important lesson I think we all learned from that period is you have to let your children take responsibilities for their choices and actions.

The oldest son is doing great now. Matter of fact, this weekend we are going to his girlfriend's graduation from Auburn University. They have been together over 8 years and she is a wonderful, determined, hard working young lady. We are so proud to have her as part of our family. He has a good job and inherited his Dad's building ability. We know he will continued to do well in life and his choices.

The youngest son has always been a daredevil. He has a job he loves, and one I find dangerous. He builds, sets up, repairs, cell phone towers. He travels all over the southeast.

I guess this brings us up to now. Me and Billy are not so young anymore but we both still feel young. We still do as much as we did 30+ years ago. We are so blessed to have great health and to have a safe, healthy, happy family.
Just yesterday I was climbing up into the barn loft. I thought of 25 years earlier of climbing in another barn loft on our first property. I was 26 years old then and thought as I climbed the ladder, I still feel young, like I am 18 years old. I sure can climb this ladder for a old lady of 26.
Yesterday, I still felt like that old lady of 26 years.
Life is wonderful. I always wake up with the anticipation of what exciting thing is going to happen today!
I also feel blessed to have a husband who thinks I am wonderful ,who is so talented, hard working, a good provider, a non-drinker, and who put his family first no matter what.
To have 2 wonderful sons who overcame difficult times in their lives to become hard working,caring, young men.

I am sorry again this is a long post. I don't ever know what is going to come out until I set down and start typing.
You all have been great therapy for me and I appreciate each and every one of your comments along the way.
This is not the end by no means. Me, Billy and the boys are still working up a storm.

Have a great day!

Young Dreamers Chapter Nine

2008-07-03T08:15:00.000-04:00

The story continues:

Good Morning,
Last week I left you in 1993-1994.

A little about this picture. One day this man appears at the front door and has this picture with him. He said he had taken it from an airplane and did we want to buy it.Even thought we found this a little strange, Billy said yes. He said one day that may be all we have besides memories of the house. That was before we had decided to sell and move. We ordered a large framed one that I have hanging in the living room now.
Who would have thought in a very rural area that someone would take a picture from an airplane and 20 years later that picture mean so much to those living in that house then?

We had finished the house and the boys were teenagers.
Those were some of the roughest years our family lived through. We survived. None of us the same, but we survived.
I usually deal with life's difficult moments hard. It envelopes my whole soul until I can't deal with anymore and I let myself mourn the mistakes, the what ifs and why me until my mind and body accepts the situation and I let it go and pick myself up, dust my self off, put it behind me and go on to the next life lesson.
It is different though when you can't pick your child up and dust him off and go on. That was an entirely new experience. I learned a long hard lesson you can't do everything for your children. They have to learn to do for their selves. Mama's aren't really superwoman all the time.
I can honestly say just writing about this period made me feel physically ill last week and I dreaded finishing this weeks chapter. I do believe I am past the sad feelings and ready for this weeks chapter now.

It changed Billy also. When we sold the house and land we found 100 acres in middle Georgia that was very reasonable. We bought it and found another used , very used, mobile home to live in while we built a smaller house this time. No basement. Just a basic house.
I found these plans in a house plan magazine and liked it a lot. This is all Billy had to go by to built the house.

Billy like it also and started to work on it. Him and the boys.
I guess I didn't take pictures of the process because I couldn't find any here . I had bought one of the then popular video cameras. You remember the ones that were huge and weight several hundred pounds.(It seemed like) so I do have a lot of it on video tape. In three, yes 3 months time we had moved in. We still had finishing up to do but we were inside the house for the winter.
I think the house looked a lot like the house plan.

Side view

We had decided to simplify life with a small plain house. Nothing fancy. No marble floors. Nothing to show off. This time Billy hurried through the work on the house. Not a single fancy thing to show off in this house. A lot was left unfinished as if it didn't matter. Instead of pretty floors we had rugged indoor/outdoor carpet.
I loved all the porches though. The master bedroom has its own back porch. It is a comfortable house.

I decided I would get a job outside the home. Living in a rural area there is not a lot of job opportunities. I found a job at a retail store. I worked the next 10 years and wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
In the mean time Billy,of course, has a lot of projects going on. Billy and our youngest son decided to try raking and baling pine straw.

Billy found out there was a demand for live animal traps in rural areas. He figured out how to build the traps and built them well. He had a lot of the surrounding areas animal control that bought his traps. The traps worked without injuring the animals.

He also built a chicken house and raised all types of poultry.

He also built a huge incubator and hatched the eggs and sold baby chicks.
(couldn't find a picture of the incubator)

I can honestly say that Billy has enjoyed this land and all the different things he has done here more than any other place we have lived. I love the land,the area also. But I still think of that first little house we built of as home. I loved that little house.
Over the years this has become home too. Slow paced, comfortable, familiar...home.

Next week's chapter- Billy decides to remodel the farm house.

I don't mean to make these posts so long. It just comes out long. I know all your lives are busy and I appreciate your visits.
I hope you all have a great day.

Young Dreamers Chapter Eight

2008-07-02T05:23:00.000-04:00

The story continues......

Good Morning,

This chapter is the hardest for me. No, there is not any fairy tale ending. These years were some of the happiest and some of the hardest for our whole family.
I can't go into all the details to protect feelings and privacy.
All I can say is the boys were growing into teenagers. If you have teenagers you know how hard that part of life can be. We were in a new community. Before we moved I knew everyone around, the children my kids hung out with. The children's parents and most of the time their grandparents too.
The life lesson of this part of life was always know who your children are hanging out with. Know them well. Marble floors and a big house is not as important as family. I would rather live in a tent if my family is safe and happy.

I left you last week with the house finally finished. Billy had built a shop.

The shop finished.

We built a barn.

We had a small pond beside the barn with Muscovy ducks. They would fly off and terrorize the neighbors. I don't have picture, but Muscovy ducks are not the cutest things with a big red thing on their beaks. And huge ducks that fly good. As we found out after we got them.

Me on the front porch.

I grew flowers too.

The boys were in 4H and FFA(future farmers of America). One of the projects was raising a pig to show at the state competition.
Billy and the boys fenced in the whole 50 acres and we also raised pigs. I think at one time we had 250 pigs. And no, they didn't smell. When they are able to be out in the open land like that, they is absolutely no smell.

The big pig and the youngest son.

The spring house. I don't know if I had mention the spring house. We had the greatest water supply. Before we built the house we built the spring house. There was a heavy running spring that came out of the side of the big hill there. Billy dug down and we all 4 went to a local rock quarry. They gave us rocks. Now I am here to tell you rock gathering is hard work. We had to pick the rocks up and load them on the back of the truck. Good size rocks. We brought them home and put them in the bottom of the hole(lined with well casing) for the spring water to filter through. That was the best water I have ever had. Bottle water was just getting popular and I told Billy if we bottled that water we would have been millionaires. The spring always ran good and we had all the water we wanted and needed to use.
Anyway here is the spring house in the big snow.

The bridge going across the little creek. If you look close in the left hand side is a rock waterfall Billy made. The water would run over the rock sticking out and with the windows opened up you went to sleep hearing the cascading water. Ahhh, a peaceful sound to fall asleep to and wake up to.

We had back porches that ran the length of the house. Upstairs and downstairs. Here is the bottom porch.

Here is one of the trucks Billy bought and fixed, repaired, and painted to resell while we were living there.
Before.

And After. (notice the boys have grown several feet taller)

I had several people asking -why would we want to sell after all that work?
There wasn't one particular reason. The land was at the foothills of the Georgia mountains. Beautiful land. Billy wanted to farm and the land was just too hilly to farm. The property tax tripled in 3 years.
Then, we (Billy and myself) felt we had put too much emphasis on building a big house and maybe we had not done something right in raising the boys. Maybe we worked too hard and had the boys working too hard. We just questioned everything we did and everything we hadn't done.
So we decided to find flatter land. A bigger piece of property and build a much smaller house.
We did. We sold that house in 1994 and moved where we are now. We didn't loose money on the house but we sure didn't make a big profit either.
This was before the land prices sky rocketed up around here. We sold the place to a very nice lady who was thrilled to get it.

Billy was already 40 by now and I wasn't far behind. We wasn't exactly the young dreamers anymore. We had some rude awakenings along the way and now we had our eyes wide open. We didn't look at life the same but we still knew how to work hard.

And guess what? We were back living in a run down trailer while we built another house. Us and 2 teenagers in a very small trailer. In 3 months time Billy and the boys had this house we live in now built and we were moved in it.

I will have more about it next week. I guess it can be Middle Agers with Their Eyes Wide Open chapter next.

UPDATE:
July 2, 2008---Last chapter tomorrow. Have a good day.

Young Dreamers Chapter Seven

2008-07-01T06:53:00.000-04:00

The Story Continues-

Good Morning,

Young Dreamers Chapter Seven
Finishing inside and outside

After living in the little trailer for over a year and another winter was in full blast, we moved into the unfinished new house. For the first time in our lives we had store bought heat. Two electric heat pumps heated the house plus we had a wood heater(of course) in the living room and moved the wood heater from the trailer to the basement.
When we moved in it still looked something like this.

We started at the very top of the house and finished a room at a time. Went on the next room.
It took over a year to finish the inside while we were living in it. Billy built a shop on the property where he could do work on tractors and trucks so we would have income coming in.
We never borrowed money to finish the house. We would wait until we had enough for whatever we were working on. We never used a credit card. We still drove used cars and Billy still had the 1953 International truck he drove. I still shopped at thrift stores.

On one of the trips to the sawmill in the Georgia mountains we would pass the Georgia marble mines. At one place we saw a few pallets of marble tile sitting out front of one of the businesses. I talked Billy into stopping and we asked about it. The man said they were imperfect pieces, some had corners missing, lines through the marble and so on. We looked at the shiny grey-white marble and all I saw was beautiful stone. Then Billy asked how much and we couldn't believe the price. Less that 1/2 price of what it sold for in stores. We bought 2 pallets. This was before we finished the house and the marble sat out front of the trailer then the house for a long time. Then we were finally down to the floors.

Here is the same front hall with the marble on the floors.

The ceilings downstairs were 10 feet high.
We also found a lot of the lighting on clearance for 1/2 price at one of the building supply stores.
Here is the front entrance.

Billy made all the kitchen cabinets.

We had enough of the marble tile for the kitchen floor too!

And for the dining room.

The dining room floor was my favorite floor. Billy took the broke pieces of marble and put it around the edges. It turned out the best I thought.

The carpet in the downstairs living room was the last flooring. (We even put marble behind and under the heater)

We worked hard and we played hard too. Here are the boys on one of the tractors Billy fixed up to sell.

I told Billy when I was looking through these pictures to put on next,we always looked like we were having fun.
We were far enough north in Georgia where we had a few snow falls. Here is one.

A back view of the house. We had back porches,upstairs and downstairs.
This is in one of the snows. There was 2 creeks that ran on both sides of the house. Where they met we built a pond.

A front view of the finished house.

We started farming. We bought a big deep freezer and filled it with vegetables. I also bought a new pressure canner and can everything I could. We ate well.

Next week I will have some more pictures of the barn, shop, and house.
We were still working hard as usual.

Just a reminder, this is not the place or house we live at now.

I hope you have a great day.

Young Dreamers Chapter 6

2008-06-30T05:15:00.002-04:00

UPDATE: June 30, 2008

Hi Everyone,
My Mother, who is almost 85, is in the hospital. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.
We have our sons and their families coming to the farm this weekend. It will be so wonderful to spend time with them, and other family members coming also.

I am still re-posting an earlier series I wrote about our family's adventures of building our homes.
I will have some new updates soon.
Everyone have a great summer.

Pam

Good Morning,

Young Dreamers Chapter 6. Moving in the new house.

I left you in 1989 last week.

It was starting our 2nd winter living in the little trailer with only a wood heater in the back built on room to heat us.

I can remember so clearly the one time I was ready to just give up. It was one of those cold all the way to your bones day. It was 33 degrees and raining. The boys were in school. Me and Billy went to pick up supplies. When we get back to the trailer it is sleeting and the fire was out in the wood heater. We were soaking wet and freezing cold with out any way to immediately warm up. I thought I just can't take any more. Our 2 sons never complained about any of the hardships or the hard work they were doing. I know it was hard on us all.
We decided that day we were going to go ahead and move in the house even though the inside was far from finished. We had heat pumps installed and the electricity was ready to be turned on. We did move in and used those heat pumps. Now I am talking about the inside was just sheet rocked up and muddied but not finished and the top ceiling was not put all the way up. When we got the first electric bill it was over $300. We went to work fast on finishing the upstairs ceilings.
We would take one room at the time and finish it completely. Then move on the next room. But the next spring it was coming together. We had moved the trailer out from front and now it was looking like this.

And here is the original house me and Billy saw over 11 years ago. The picture I would put on the refrigerator with a magnet.
A house that represented the future.

I know our version isn't as decorative as the original but it is what we could afford. Billy tried his best to do a good job and he did, I thought.

Next chapter I'll have more pictures and some inside surprises we lucked up on.
I hope you all have a great week!

Young Dreamers Chapter 5

2008-06-29T03:00:00.002-04:00

Good Morning,

This is a story of a family who built their house the hard way. Doing it their own selves. No architect, no draftsman. We did hire an electrician,just to be safe, that did both the electric and heating.( We bartered some on that too).

A young man(my husband Billy) that did most of the work. He figured out everything on this house. He would spend hours drawing in his notebook.He knew how he wanted things.
A young man without formal training to do any of this. He just studied and figured, drew. Trial and error. and Trial and error some more.
This was what he had been waiting for. He always has loved to built things.

Two young boys who learned how to work until you get it done. They also had 50 acres to explore and many adventures on the way also.

A young wife and mother(me) who thought this was the greatest thing ever. Most of the time!

I left you last time in 1988. We had sold our 7 acres of land and the house we had built to buy 50 acres in Northeast Georgia.
I had always lived in Metro Atlanta area my whole 31 years of life. My Mother(my Father had passed away in 1986) all my brothers and sisters still lived in the Atlanta area. It was a hard move. The boys seemed excited about moving to the country, but it was a big move for them also. They left all their friends, the only place they remembered living at. We kept telling them that no matter where we lived we would all be together and that was what was important.
So here we go to the unknown and the biggest adventure we could imagine.

We had the trailer all set up and ready to move in. Billy built this room on the back of the trailer to put a wood stove and our bedroom in. The clothes dryer also went in this room because there wasn't a place for it in the trailer.
The wood heater was our only heat. We opened the back windows in the trailer and let the heat flow through and also the back door on the trailer let the heat go to the boys bedrooms.
Oh yea, I need to mention I didn't have a stove either. I used the microwave and a 2 sided hot plate. The trailer had gas lines for a gas stove(we didn't have gas) and we decided to wait to just buy a stove for the new house.

We paid the land off with the money from our house sale. We lived in the trailer several months trying to decide what to do. I know Billy had the house he was determined to build planned out. With paying the land off though we knew all we had left wouldn't build much.
Billy's business had slowed down at his shop. It was now almost a 2 hour drive for him to go there. The paint he used on the trucks was really bad on his health too. He decided he wanted to sell the business. So he did.
We now had the money for the house. After paying taxes on the sale, we planned out a budget to live while we spent time building the house.
We didn't buy anything new, no new cars, t.v.s or anything that didn't have to do with the building the house or getting the land ready for farming.

We start the basement. More cement block toting. I was already an expert at that!

Billy did buy one of the most important things. It wasn't new. It was a 1969 Chev. truck that would haul the house block by block, loads of wood(from a sawmill in the North Georgia Mountains) by to our little piece of paradise. In our opinion, anyway.
Billy would figure up what size boards he would need next and I'll call the sawmill with the order. Then Billy would head up the winding mountain road to pick up the lumber.

The house starts to take shape. Billy does all the carpenter work. The boys and I help with holding, toting, and more toting.
We look at prices of ready made columns and decide they are too expensive. Billy comes up with a plan to make his own out of pipes. I never doubted he was going to do it either. That is one smart man. I have to admit though when I saw them, I did wonder (for a short moment how that was going to look??). I knew in the long run, he'd make a good looking column. He did!

Here Billy is making the wooden top cap of the column.

Billy starting the cement on the columns. He used mesh wire to hold the cement on the pipes.

By August of 1989 the house starts to look like a house.

Notice the ole faithful International truck and Case tractor. They did their fair share of work around there too!

I tried to show a lot more pictures but had a heck of a time. Maybe I can put them in a album to show them all later.
I have lots more to tell and photos. to go with it. Stay tune. I'll tell more this tomorrow.
Have a great day!