The Journey Part 3

As I stated in one of my previous post, my papaw only lived about 7 miles from our farm, he had cattle on his place and liked working them. Dad and papaw decided to go ahead and put cattle on the farm and papaw would take care of them, we would go down and haul hay when needed and check/repair the fences when we were down.

A few years later we moved closer to the farm, (20 miles) then we took care of them all the time. We generally kept about 20 cows with calves and a bull, they were a mix of Herefords and Angus and the bull was always an Angus.

Around 1978 dad sold the timber off of the farm, he had in the contract that they were not to cut any marked trees, dad loved to squirrel hunt so he went through and marked all the Hickory, Pignut Hickory and Beech trees. The loggers were only supposed to cut timber and not pulp wood, dad noticed that on one section they had started cutting the pulp wood as well. Dad approached the foreman on the job and he told dad the contract stated "cutting rights", he told dad that meant he could cut anything he wanted. Dad proceed to mark all the trees since the contract said "no cutting of marked trees", dad got his point across and there were no more small trees cut, only timber. For the next 3 or 4 years I cut and sold firewood from the tree tops left behind, I bought my first car with that money, I still love cutting firewood to this day.

After high school I moved to Louisville, Ky to go to school and have lived away from there ever since. I always went home every chance I got (at least once a month) and before I got married spent most of my vacation time down there hunting. Dad sold all of the cattle in the early 90's when he could no longer take care of them. Over the years the pastures starting growing up again, the fences, barns, out buildings and the little shack started to deteriorate.

I always loved the farm and spending as much time out there as possible, about five years ago my parents put the farm in my name, since that time I have started to reclaim the pastures. The fence, barns and some of the out buildings are beyond repair, the little shack is still in pretty good shape but still needs a lot of work.

So this is where and how the journey began, from here on out it will be what we are doing to try and move back to the farm I loved so much as a child, and still do to this day, I have so many fond memories and every time I go back there it just feels like where I need to be.