Farm Visit

Recently, my cousin Ed told me about something that he had found on his farm that he thought I might like to see. Yesterday, Will, Rob and Eleanor joined me for the visit. On the way and for old-times' sake, we stopped for breakfast at Ditto's. For many years, Dad ate breakfast here almost every morning with his various friends.

While we waited for our corned beef hash, pancakes, eggs, and other goodies, Eleanor did some coloring with her Pop. Ditto's provided quite the extensive crayon collection.

When we arrived at the farm, Ed was out working.

He showed us how his machine shed had been framed with the timbers from one of the two old barns on the farm. Eleanor was fascinated by all of the machinery and posed for us on one of the tractors (a Farmall MTA, for those of you who may be interested). She also liked seeing all the cats and kittens and their Beagle, Daisy. Later, Karilyn showed Eleanor her Beanie Baby and thimble collections too.

This is the remaining barn on the farm. You may recall from prior postings that Will is quite interested in timber framing. So, he and I were interested in seeing how this barn had been built in that style.

But the big attraction was finding these carvings in the barn. This one reads H. F. - 1915. These may be the initials of the owner of the farm four generations back. The farm has been in the family for at least five generations now.

The more interesting carving for us was this one. We were not quite sure how to read the first initial in the second pair of initials. If it was an H, then this could be my father expressing feelings for my mother when he was a young man growing up on the farm. However, it definitely appears to be an E or an R or some combination, maybe an H with an E somehow superimposed. Too bad there wasn't a date to help figure this out (or a father still around to ask). Either way, this was fascinating to see, and maybe some day we will come up with a best explanation. Any suggestions or ideas would be most welcome.