The story of the farm had a humble beginning.
I closed on the land in the summer of ’92 and had to immediately get busy setting things up for the boys to start school in September. The first step was to clear an area for a structure, bulldozing an acre or so to accomodate a double-wide trailer ( perhaps not the most elegant, but definitely the most cost effective solution to student housing). This part of the project was fulfilled by a used 20-year old Horton double-wide, a 3 bedroom 2 bath mobile home that was certainly no beauty, but was fundamentally sound and came at the bargain price of $10,000; moved, set up and complete with tie-downs, skirting and lots of roaches!
(Our first night in the trailer was memorable, Dave decided to sleep in the truck, rather than face the army of antenna-clad insects that would scurry across the linoleum floor as soon as the lights went out. A case of roach spray and some bombs in each room were sufficient to win the battle and halt the invasion.)
The 20 year old 1972 “Horton” early on. The first front porch as a concrete block or two. There was no TV or air conditioning in the beginning.
Initially the trailer was occupied by Dave, Jeff and their friend “Bubba”. Right away the Trailer became a “money-maker” when Bubba began to pay his $100 per month rent. Later a guy named Vic moved in to the 3rd bedroom and cha-ching another 100 bucks!
Living must have been a little rough, that first year. The front porch was a couple of cinder blocks, and the back door was a 6 foot drop. There was no air conditioning and all that implies for hot fall days in Georgia; but probably the biggest inconvenience was the primitive television set-up. Rabbit ears were a flop, so to speak, and even the old trusty aluminum foil extensions didn’t do anything to improve the snowy reception from the Spartanburg/Anderson station; so we stuck an antenna up in an oak tree out front and soon the boys were getting Bus Stop weather reports for Northwestern South Carolina.
I didn’t really trust giving the boys actual cash; so each Friday, I would drive over to Athens and stop at Ingles to buy a weeks supply of macaroni and cheese (I’m sure there were other items); the boys would supply the deer meat to make their favorite dish they named “mac and mac” (whatever that means).
One of the most anticipated items in the weekly care package were VCR tapes containing programs I would record for them during the week; Beavis and Butthead was a favorite, hunting shows, MTV and the Simpsons rounded out the weekly programming for Dave, Jeff and Bubba.
Once the antenna was up, the TV experience improved, but perhaps the cultural damage had already been done to two boys living out in rural Oglethorpe county Georgia, hunting deer all fall on the property, killing and eating 14 deer and at least one squirrel.
By spring it became obvious when Dave and Bubba were watching a Nascar race on the Spartanburg channel; they were there in the doublewide, in full camo, drinking Natural Lite beer, dipping Skoal and spitting in a brass spittoon. As they were sitting on the Herculon sofa, Bubba made a remark like “Look at all those Rednecks” in the racing crowd audience as shown on TV. Naturally I had to point out the irony of this statement and invited them to take a look around; the moral of the story is that a guy named Bubba should not be casting stones.
My mom and I working on the farm. 1992,
We began work on a barn and later a chicken house in the first year, which would serve us well as we began to build our menagerie of goats, a holstein bull, chickens and more.
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