The Past Lives on at the Farm

As time passes on the farm we find more and more bits of the past. When we plow there are always bits of glass and pottery tossed up from the earth. They are tiny reminders of all that went before us.

Among these items were broken candlesticks covered in dirt. Did they once sit shiny and bright on someone’s dinner table? Did they once hold Christmas candles for a joyful holiday? We will never know.

Once deep in the woods, we found old bottles mostly broken and tossed away. Once they held canned food for a family, likely vegetables that were grown on the farm. What happened to the mother that stood over the stove on a hot summer day canning food to feed her family? This woman who walked on the same land we now walk on, she lived her life in a different time from us but yet we share so much.

The other day we were cleaning out a room in the barn and found some odd things, a woman’s pocketbook and an old shoe. The barn seems a strange place for such things but who knows how they came to be there. When we opened the pocketbook we found birthday cards, a Christmas card, and some mail also a piece of paper with some writing on it, but sadly it was not filled with money.

The envelopes were marked “To Aunt Clara” and the handwriting is the same, but one of the cards was signed “Love Carol West.” The other card was signed “So sorry to be late Lots of love always Carol Lee,” in different handwriting. There is also a Christmas card that is signed “Shelby and Frank Rogers.”

One piece of mail has the name Willis C Burrell Rt 3 Hiawassee, GA on it. This is strange because our farm is not in Hiawassee, GA, but about thirty miles away in Batesville, GA.