Grandma June,whom I've written about before, was born and raised on the Farm, and Ron spent much of his young life and teenage years there. Corrie and all of her close cousins, many growing up in Austin, would make the trek each summer for an extended family trip.
Like with my family's Cabin, we've tried to do something similar: make it a place that grows in our kids' imagination, a place that's theirs as much as ours.
There's space to roam, there're tractors to drive, there's work to be done. It really is a wonderful diversion for city-folk like us.
At this point, I lean towards pictures really only explaining it...
I think Corrie's eyes are shut in the following picture, but the smiles come easily once you've arrived:
Oh yeah, the hammock district, down on 3rd:
The Big Barn, with Ron's newly added pottery studio, is a great place to watch storms roll by fifty miles out, have an auction or two, perform the talent show sketches---during the reunions---or muster for target practice:
Tractor time for the city-boy, Cassius:
Other cool memories for kids: riding in the back of an open trailer:
Father's Day and our anniversary were the same day this year, and while I hadn't showered in a while, a father's day photo-op was in the cards:
Laundry drying the old fashioned way: using the windy-as-hell environs:
That was not an easy accomplishment, putting sheets up in that kind of wind, let me tell you.
Other places to explore, the South Forty, as they're called (as in the "southern forty acres") shows the rolling prairie land that makes up the edge of the Texan canyon country, a beautiful place only a mile away to the west:
There are two working tractors and a riding lawn mower, and in the old junk yard, you can still find the remnants of farm equipment: old cotton gins and even a tractor or two:
One of the only visible neighbors, a farmhouse a few miles away on a ridge, shows the beauty and remoteness of everything:
Time dilates and the world turns dreamlike. Lighting storms pass by in the distance bringing amazing shows. Other nights it passes overhead, making a show for someone further away, as the rain pours down in enormous sheets and thunder rattles everything. Hanging doors at midnight, hanging swamp coolers at midday. Wasps and hornets everywhere...grasshoppers bouncing away by the dozen with every step.
The reunion had been canceled, and Corrie decided, months ago, that we needed to get the hell out of LA for a while, and planned this trip. She wasn't sure who she wanted to notify, but since Ron basically lives there, he needed to know. News like that couldn't be kept under wraps, and most everyone of Corrie's immediate family made the trip to see us and meet Camille.
We got a few days alone with Ron before the madness, before the brisket and the weekend, and then a single day afterward, after everyone except Ron left and before we started our trek home.
Words can't express the serenity that the Farm provides.
One night, sitting on the covered front porch (on the right below) watching a lighting storm to the north, we watched a large barn owl perched on the thirty-foot tall post below on the left repeatedly swoop down, nab a mouse, mole, or gopher, and return to the post. Just another amazing thing to see while at the Farm:
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