Such a wonderful day here in Floyd today. Started out rather cool, but by the end of the day it had to be in the 50's or so. I was up just a little after 6:00 a.m. this morning. Hard to believe I know, but I had promised to help out my friend Rima with a day of baby sitting for one of her grand children. Little did I know that a 18 month old whirl wind of a kid would blow in and keep me running for more than 8 hours. I'm exhausted!

    On the other hand, it was also a lot of fun. We picked her up in Floyd and brought her back out to the house where she kept us busy for the next several hours wandering, or should I say running, all over the place. Interesting to be totally captivated by a little munchkin with an attention span of about 3 seconds. Pounding on the piano, then in to play ball, on to check out the mirror, then into the kitchen to check out the cereal boxes, then climb into the box to be pulled around and then climb out of the box to run, then in and pound on the piano a little bit more, then start all over again. By 10:30 I was ready for a nap... lucky for me so was she. Rima did much better than me of course, she at least manage to stay awake.

    About 30 minutes of nap time and Brynn and I were ready for round 2. First a little lunch, Rima and I had home made beans and cornbread while she had some kind of pureed chicken and vegetable thing. It was sort of yellow and mushy and looked like.... well you get the picture. But she seemed to like it and that is all that matters. Afterwards we bundled her up and all went outside for a walk. Took a couple of carrots out to feed the horses. She thought that was a lot of fun and enjoyed making little noises at them while waving hi. Then it was time to play in the driveway gravel and mud before falling down and rolling down the hill where her right shoe went right into a nice big pile of horse poo. Lucky for us she doesn't know any better, so we just picked her up, scrapped her shoe off and went on with our hike. I have to admit, for a little person of only 18 months, she walks really well. We put in just under a mile according to my pedometer, and except for picking her up when a car went by, she did all of it on her own two feet.

    Another couple of hours of play this afternoon almost produced a nap. But of course she held off until we had her buckled into the car seat before she finally faded out. Dropped her off at her moms place of employment and then went over to a local restaurant here in Floyd, Micky G's, for a fabulous dinner. I was craving pizza, so that is what I got, but Rima had one of their special 'special's', where she just tells the cook to make something up, in this case, with some fresh Mahi Mahi, and out comes a magnificent meal. Fresh grilled fish on a bed of angel hair pasta and fresh spinach with an olive oil, lemon and caper reduction sauce on the whole thing. I seldom wish I had ordered something different, and make no mistake, my pizza was mighty fine, but that meal was just top notch.

   It is suppose to be another warm day tomorrow and then even warmer over the weekend, with temperatures nearing 70 degrees. I hope to get out and about a little bit more tomorrow. To tell the truth though, I'm actually more tired today than I was yesterday after trimming trees and hauling limbs all afternoon. I guess it's 'good' for me once in awhile, but I am certainly glad I don't have to do that every day.

   Here are a few photo's from a couple of weeks ago when I was still in Florida. I went over to a local state park and took in what they call their 'Cane Squeezing Days Celebration'. It is an old homestead and they have lots of volunteers out there in period costumes showing how things were once done before modern conveniences.

Dudley Farm State Park just West of Gainsville Florida.

Dec 7, 2013

 

The back porch on the house. Plenty of people enjoying the shade while spinning yarn and sewing quilt pieces. 

One of several tobacco drying barns on the place. I liked the stone foundation and the covered shed area where wagons could park and unload out of the rain.

Inside the drying barn they had several racks of dried tobacco leaves hanging up.

Not sure what this little cart would of been used for, probably just about anything, I sure liked it though.

Dudley farm use to be on the main road between Gainsville and Tallahassee. It was also the biggest farm around the area. As such they had their own general store which also housed the post office. This is the original building as it would of looked like in the late 1800's. They picked it up and moved it to it's current location at some point in it's history.

Some of the farm implements you might of been able to buy at one time.

Another tobacco drying barn.

Since this was their annual 'Cane Squeezing Days Celebration' they had lots of volunteers around to show you how it had been done back in the old days. Here several kids get to try their hand at shelling dry corn off the cob and then grinding it into corn meal with a hand mill.

This guy was showing several kids, and me, how you could take small pieces of twine and twist it into bigger and bigger pieces of rope using a simple home made jig with an off set crank at one end.

The single block above the well.

This farm, like many of that day, had a separate building they used for cooking and dining. This kept the excess heat from the stove and fireplaces from heating up the whole house and also prevented every thing from burning if the kitchen caught on fire. Which they evidently did on a regular basis. This view shows part of the kitchen and part of the dining area.

Another view of the dining area showing that they also used this space to churn butter and to also iron clothes. Something that could be done while a meal was cooking.

The old outhouse. This one is actually a 3-seater. I have to say it would of been mighty cozy in there at times. Having grown up for the first 6 years of my life having to use one of these I can truly appreciate the design of the one my father had built. A roomy, comfortable 2-seater. It was never as nice as indoor plumbing like the neighbor kids had, but it wasn't all that bad either. Except maybe in the winter. Or at night.

The salt and smoke house.

A view of the inside of the smoke and salt house. Having no refrigeration at that time, methods of preservation had to be used when large quantities of meat were available at butchering time. Salting was done by burying large hunks of meat in pure salt in wooden troughs hollowed out from the trunk of a tree. This meat would sometimes stay buried in the salt for 4-6 months depending on the size of the portion. They could also hang the meat up and keep a smoky fire burning for several days to several weeks until most of the meat had dehydrated and taken on a rich smoky flavor. It was certainly an art form that nearly every person at that time knew how to do. It's kind of sad that the skill to do that today is mostly gone.

The outdoor boiling area where sap from crushed sugar cane was brought to boil it down into cane syrup, or even further down into molasses and sugar. This one wasn't being used this year. The one up closer to the road was the one they were using.

A view showing the large copper kettles that were used to boil most of the water out of the sugar cane juice. A large hot fire was maintained in the oven like area below the kettles and the syrup was tended constantly to keep it from boiling over and to remove any foam that developed.

At the newer sugar cane boiler closer to the road and main park office. This guy was using a large dipper to skim foam off the top of the boiling cane juice.

Another view of the oven and boiling kettle.

Lots of old fashioned farm machinery on the place. Some of it still in use. This is a horse drawn hay rake. I can still remember that my grandfather had, and used, one that was very similar to this one.

One of two mules they use for just about everything there at the park. They do demonstrations of plowing and planting and hauling stuff in an old fashioned wagon with the two mules. They were also using this one to turn the sugar cane crushing mill that day. It looks like they take pretty good care of their animals there at the park.

One last view of another old barn off in the distance.