Home Sweet Home

Even though I wasn't born or raised here, I've always felt like I was coming home whenever I visited my Dad's home place. 
I guess it could be the deep roots the family has planted here. I can look out the front (back) windows and see both the spot where my Great-Great Grandparents house was, and my Great-Grandparents house that is still there.

I would say maybe it's just that deep down, I'm a farm girl at heart. But whenever I say that, my City-girl psyche pees herself laughing at me.

I do have such wonderful memories of the summers I spent with my Great-Grands on their farm, though. Straight out of Little House on the Prarie stuff; milking the cow, feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, hoeing the garden, digging potatoes, snapping beans and shucking corn on the big wrap-around porch, canning in the kitchen, fishing in the pond, slopping the hogs, and so on.

After my Great-Grands passed away, and after my Grannie's husband retired, they built a house here on some of the land she inherited from her parents, I think. I need to write it down because I keep forgetting which is what. She also inherited some land from her Grandparents and/or Aunt. I believe it was her Aunt, who'd inherited from her parents (Grannie's Grandparents, my Great-Great Grandparents.) (Confusing!)

Anyway, she built it facing (back) towards her parents old farm place (which was inherited by her younger sister), her older brothers place, and her other inherited property. Not to mention a lot of cousins and other relatives. At one time, everyone in this area was family.

The big mountain with the two humps is known as Eagle Mountain. 
It's hard to see, but right above my great-uncle's old barn on the right side of the picture you can just see the porch roof and one dormer window of my Great-Grands old house.

When it would come thunderstorms at night, I would cry because I thought it was really boulders rolling off Eagle Mountain and they were going to smash the house.

If you look down from the top of the right-side hump, or wing, there's a "hill"...I've also forgotten it's name, but Grannie always called it "Bob's Mountain". My dad is Bob, he owns that hill up to where the Chattahoochee National Forest starts, plus the square of pasture behind those two houses in the pic. 
A road divides the property now, but some 50+ years ago the old road ran through the middle of the pasture, and that land my Dad owns was a whole parcel that was originally a part of (my Great-Great Grandparent's).

Other than the square that my Dad owns, the rest of the pasture and the barn used to belong to my Grannie's brother, my Great-Uncle. His old house is hidden in the stand of trees beside the barn.
When he died, he left his whole spread to a cousin, who ended up selling/losing all but the house and about an acre, if that much.
So, all that I'm overlooking - except my Dad's part - now belongs to strangers :(

I really would have preferred my part of the inheritance to be the property, but my sister didn't want Grannie's house, and I wasn't going to fight about it.
Anyway, I don't have much to complain about. It's a nice house.

I/we call this the front view, but in actuality, per the house plans, it's the rear of the house. The front door is on past the carport in the below picture. I don't reckon anyone has ever gone to the front door for admittance.  Mostly they go to the carport door, which is most accessible, or at least, the "back door" on the "back porch", which everyone thinks is the front.

This is coming up the driveway to the south side of the house. (Or right side, in the first picture.)
Dad built the little garage-barn. The side under the Coke sign is an auto-shop, then to the left of it he added on a wood-working shop. To the left of that (not pictured) is a camper garage.

There's another garage-shed on out...in the yard, I can't describe where from here, lol.
Where he keeps his mower and tractor and who knows what other mechanical gadgets that I'll never be able to learn to ride/drive on my own.

Down beside it is his fruit orchard, which I have got to learn to take care of.
I just barely know how to vegetable garden after 4 or 5 years of trying...I know less than nothing about fruit farming.
There's Peach, Plum, Cherry, Apple, Apricot, and Pear trees, Blueberries, Blackberries, and Muscadines and Grapes. I think that's all.
Except bears. Yes, real bears. Apparently bears like pears, lol.

This was my view of Bell Mountain when I was standing in the Orchard this evening. The sun kind of washed everything out, but it was a lovely view with the mountain, the old farm house, and the horse in the pasture.

Except that horse nearly scared the peep out of me earlier in the day.
Earlier I was out exploring around in the Orchard, and I was scared of running across a snake. I picked up some limbs/sticks and was carrying them to the brush pile, when one of the horses, which was up closer to the house then, started walking.  I knew the horses were there, but I was concentrating so hard on seeing a snake, when I heard the horse moving I thought something was after me!

Way back when my Great-Uncle owned the pasture out front and Grannie owned this land, she actually owned some of the pasture, but they didn't see the need to fence her part off, when my Great-Uncle could use it for his cows, and at one time, growing hay.

But now that the cousin sold it all off to strangers, Dad recently went and fenced his/our part off, so I would know what was mine, and also giving him/us two little pastures to do something with if he/we wanted to.

I wonder if I could put a hog pen and raise a pig or two in this one? They're pretty nasty, I know, but I loooove bacon. And ham. And bacon, and pork roast, and bacon, and pork chops, and did I say bacon?

I could see a little red barn with a milk cow and some chickens in this one.
(And barn cats, because I'm terrified of snakes, and snakes looove chicken eggs.)

Old Mel-iss-a had a farm, ee-yi-ee-yi-ohh!