This is a small collection from many photos I have of our life on a rural Georgia farm that I wanted to share with you.
Grinding oats with the hammer mill. The hammer mill is a Harvey Hammer Mill from the 1940s. It is old but is still works just fine. The hammer mill is powered by our 1953 Case Tractor.
Our 1953 Case tractor. We bought it over 33 years ago. The first picture is right after we bought it when we were a young married couple and our oldest son was a toddler. It still cranks right up and is always ready to work.
The water wheel my husband built. We found out that over 100 years ago a water wheel was here on our farm. Now this one sits exactly where the one from long ago turned.
The rock bridge/dam that my husband also put back. After we cleared the brush and trees, we could see the outline of the old mill pond. The pond is back now, also.
Brown Crowder Peas. One of my favorite vegetables to grow and freeze.
Crowder or cowpeas are probably native to the continent of Africa. They are thought to have been brought to the United States in early Colonial times. They became a staple food in the Southeastern U.S.A. Crowder peas are eaten as cooked fresh shelled green peas (boiled with usually some seasoning and meat like fatback or bacon) or left to dry on the vine for later use, either for seeds or cooked as dried beans.
Growing and pressure canning Roma green beans. Roma beans are long, wide, flat-podded Italian-style green beans. I like to can green beans. I just think they taste better than frozen ones.
This is a recipe for canning green beans that I have used for over 25 years.
Canned Green Beans
3 gallons of broken green beans.
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup vinegar
1/4 cup salt
Combine sugar, vinegar and salt. Add beans and enough water to cover the beans. Heat to boiling.
I usually cook the beans for about 15-20 minutes.
Pack loosely in hot jars. Cover the beans inside the jars with the liquid.
Follow directions for your pressure canner.
The instructions for my canner calls for 10 pounds of pressure for 25 minutes on quart jars. This could vary on different types of canners.
Tomato Horn Worm – How they love to eat up tomatoes and vines. Chickens – How they love to eat up tomato worms!
The farm’s sawmill. It has came in handy for sawing lumber as we need it around the farm. The oak hardwood floors in our kitchen came from trees on our farm and was sawed on the sawmill.
Embden Geese. We had 5 last summer. Now we are down to 1. Too many varmits love goose for a meal.
The kitchen sink. When we were building our house (ourselves), we found the sinks at a salvage store. We bought 2 just like this one. One side is very deep. They are a heavy porcelain sink. We were told they came from an old hotel that was torn down in Atlanta. The other sink like the kitchen sink we put in the downstairs bathroom. We also bought 2 heavy single sinks for the upstairs bathrooms. We paid $10 each for the larger sinks, $5 each for the single sinks. I love the view of the barn and animals from the window over the sink.
Hatching eggs in our homemade walk in incubator. We have hatched hundreds of baby chicks, quails, ducks, and guineas in it. Even though at first it was a trial and error experiment. It was the thermostat. When we replaced the old one, our hatch rate went up to at least 85% each hatch.
A few of the cows that have come and gone.
Our 1960 Ford F600 dump truck. It does all sort of jobs around the farm. It even has a working 8 track tape player!
I hope you enjoyed seeing just a little bit of the life I love here on our rural Georgia farm.