Wednesday, May 01, 2019

The Way We Were Wednesday - Funny Farmers

My grandfather loved his 80 acres in the country. My grandparents lived in the old farm house, my father built a small house around the corner from that on the same farm. My grandfather was not a conventional farmer.  As a kid he had worked the fields with horses and remembered the grinding work, for little money that kept food on the table in difficult times.  

He raised a garden, never too big, but a full days work.  And he kept bees, lot and lots and lots of bees.  This colony was in our backyard one summer.  At one time my father and grandfather has about 2,000 colonies of bees.  Only about 50 on the family farm.  

As to the farm, for the most part is was meadows and woodlands.  Occasionally a neighbor would lease or sharecrop one or two of the fields, but for the most part it was our big backyard.  Some of the neighbors found it strange that we would own a farm, and not farm, it was a funny farm. 

8 comments:

  1. I grew up at the funny farm and we didn’t have a farm. Thanks for not sharing a closeup photo of a bee!

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  2. I grew up in a dysfunctional farm.

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  3. Was the main commercial product honey?

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    1. Lots and lots and lots of honey, 100 to 300 -55 gallon barrels of honey each year.

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  4. My home farm consisted of a drunken bunny, a prescription drug addicted manic viper, and hybrid children who managed to survive it all. I find bees to be quite fascinating, but not enough to raise them. As long as the bug has fewer than eight legs, I'm cool :) Also, I don't like honey but we have a yearly honey wine festival, and BH gets the local grown for his allergies there. Was there a question?

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    1. Sorry, I left off the question, comments are always treasured,

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  5. Travel, you do have a way with words!

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