Fighting Irish Forums

well, as most of you lads know, i live on an ancient farm place called, PaLyn Farm... it's about twenty or so miles out in the country on a black-topped country lane... and the main house sits back off of that about a mile, on a small, wooded hill.

it's a nice place really, nothing rich or fancy... just a little white frame/tin roofed rental house down by the end of the drive/country lane, our own white-washed brick house on the hill at the other end, a small rental cottage-type house directly behind that, a concrete block shop, a corn cribb, a small barn and another couple of smaller outbuildings.

oh... and trees. lots and lots of trees. in fact, our front yard is FULL of them. mostly old oaks, with a few hickory and a few walnut and some misc. trees as well. all ancient things...tall and big around. and lads, they DO drop some leaves! whew! mountains of leaves! and limbs! at any given moment there's the back of my old Ford truck FULL of limbs lying in the yard. sometimes i wonder with them dropping so MANY limbs, how come the blasted old trees still have ANY left on them at all! they should be naked as a Jay Bird, they should! (but they aren't!)

anyway, when we bought the old place, it was pretty sad. the owner before us had once lived here, in fact this was his old home place, but he had gotten a bit of money and moved into the city and rented out all three houses... and then, apparently forgotten about the place as long as the money from the rentals kept rolling in.

well, the renters...from what WE could see...didn't give a damn about the place...or anything else, for they purely almost destroyed everything. the little house down by the main lane was junked up and looking bad, the small cottage behind the main house was in similiar shape...and even the brick, main house was all torn up from years of abuse and neglect. we bought the place, kicked out the free-loading, non-caring renters, and fixed up all three houses (and the abused outbuildings and shop as well.)

we worked out tails off and spent tons of money that we really couldn't afford and everything really begin to shape up...the place was looking nice again. then we got some more renters (better people) in the small houses (to help replace the money we'd spent) and i took another job in store management in the city.

ahhhh, and there's the rub. in retail management, you don't have ANY personal time. no sir. you're locked into the job, constantly on call, and even if you go in planning on staying only a few minutes you'll end up staying all day. bummer!

and i've noticed here lately that due to my 'lack' of attention, the old place is starting that 'backwards' slide again...back down the short road to 'rotting' down all over again. a bloody shame, for its a catch 22. we have to have the money from my job...yet i have to have the time to spend and invest on keeping the old place right... and i physically can't do both at the same blooming time! arrgghh!

a real brain perker it is... and i see no answer to the riddle.

still, i love the old place, but am saddened by its backsliding. many other people have lived here in the distant past, way back out in the pasture, there's a couple of places where you can poke around and find the remains of old, log houses, there's a couple of dug wells, mostly fell in now...and the remains of long ago fences. up near my chicken coop/corn cribb, there's a beautiful row of yellow tulips that bloom each Spring...planted by long ago hands, an unknown owner or his wife, no doubt. over in a corner (the farm land is sort of laid out in a rough triangle with the top point against the main road and the base back behind the main house that we live in) is a small orchard. a mixed one of apple and peaches... the trees are OLD. in fact, they're so old that they are at the end of their life cycle...weak from age and being bent over and crippled-looking from many, many years of snow, wind, rain and sun. they still bear fruit, but the fruit has reverted to some sort of primitive type and no longer tastes good to humans...though the deer, possum and coons love it! and often i wonder WHO planted that orchard...and was he/she happy with it? in Spring did they walk among the surely then, tall, strong, leafy apple and peach trees and smell the sweet blossums and listen to the birds whistling peacefully overhead and know that they had done a good thing? i'm positive that they did.

but nothing lasts forever, eh? and this old farm is proof of that. (sigh) guess i'll just enjoy it while it lasts... and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

Salute!

Beowolff

I really wanna live on your farm now

Sounds lovely...
get a bit of old field turn it into a make shift runway, get an old bip' and we'll all flock to you like a flock of flocking flockers

Nice to get to know you better beowolf, or the place that you live that is. How could you continue keeping the place in shape? Maybe you should work part time? Or, the best idea, FORCE the rentals to work on the farm instead of paying you cash, or maybe forcing them would`nt be a great idea.. they might turn up on a sunday night besides your bed with a.. something. Hurt you. Perhaps that woul bnot work out very well, it depends on what kind of people the rentals are. If you have enough cash you might hire people to work on the farm.

I dont think I was much of a help here, but anyway, good luck

Sadly, I know of what you say. I lived and owned a place of a similar description. It got to be too much to hang on to during our last big recession. I had to let it go and head back to the BIG city, where the money is.

My grandad bought the place in the 30's. It was originally 3 thousand acres big. He sold most of the acreage to his neighbor in the 60's becasue he was getting too old to ranch and the oil income was a LOT easier to enjoy.

Grandma and Grandpa died in 83 within six months of each other. I bought the place in 85. Sold it in 93. I miss the quiet and solitude it provided and the good memories I had there as a youngster.

I don't miss antiquated plumbing, a piss poor water well, trips to town that took over an hour's worth of driving. Nor do I miss rattlesnakes damn near every where you looked, rabid skunks, possums, and coon's eating the cat food. Nor do I miss days wiothout water because of freezing weather, CONSTANT repair work on a house that was over 100 years old and NOTHING level or square anywhere in the house.

I miss grabbing my "kit" and heading for the hills to camp out for a few days. Bunnies shot with a flinter and cooked over mesquite wood are pretty good. Sleeping under a canopy of stars is AWESOME! ( cept when you wake up with a rattler snuggled up to you..

I do miss a 350° free zone. I had targets set up from 50 yards to 2,000 yds. I miss shooting any time I felt like busting a cap. I miss the deer in the front yard and the coyote's "choir practice" every evening about dusk. I miss picking up arrowheads and prowling old abandoned house sites from the 19th century. I found a very rusted ( totally locked up) yet still capped and loaded 1851 Navy Colt pistol one time. Half of the cylinder was rusted away and you could still see the lead ball sitting in one of the open chambers. Found several old prehistoric "metate`s" ( corn grinding stones) near a known indian encampment that was in use by the nomadic tribes until the 1850's.

The strangest thing I found was a button from a US Infantryman's tunic of civil war issue!! Texas was totally confederate at that period and I doubt that that uniform was looked upon with any pleasure during those times or after the war. I found it about half a mile from where I found the pistol. Makes me wonder if indians got him or local boys.. I could go on, but I think I'll stop.

I enjoyed it while I could and left it in better shape than I found it. The old house still stands but the guy that bought it has built a new house where the barn used to be. I suspect the old house will come down in the not too disatant future. That old house started life as 2 room school house in the 1880's. It was then hauled two miles by team to where it is now. It was converted to a 2 story home by grandpa in WWII.

Mom is getting the oil royalties now. The recent upswing in oil prices is helping her to enjoy life a bit better.

Hope you can continue to enjoy yours.

Thanks for sharing guys I never lived in a farm but my dad did when he was little in Spain. Every time we visit Spain he goes back to the ancient farm where he grew up. It is a bunch of old stone buildings sinking into the ground in a huge lot of earth in the middle of nowhere. But it means a heck of a lot to my Dad he can spend hours there looking at the old place and remembering old times

Snoop

Snoop, got any pics?

I KNOW how he feels.

W

Inspiring stories all around.

"The Rotting of PaLyn Farm" What a great title for a story I'm tempted

Heh, speaking of rotting: I had an old '72 Blazer. Big brute of a rig with a tricked out 454 Chevy engine and converted to full time four wheel drive. Anyhow, the guy I bought it off of was a body man who didn't seem to know crap about fixing the rust before painting over it. I pulled into the parking lot at work one day and heard a "clunk!". Beguilded, I got out and walked around the truck until I came to the front right fender where a huge one by one foot chunk of the fender had simply dropped off. I was laughing so much I didn't have time to get pissed.

Z

We have a really long video of the place and some pics but not in digital form, I'll take some pics with my new digicam this summer though

:FI:WillieOFS wrote:Snoop, got any pics?

I KNOW how he feels.

W

go for it, Crazy!



Beo