The Old Farm

Today was maybe one of my favorites of this trip, and that's saying a lot cause it's been exceedingly abundantly extravagantly above and beyond what I could have hoped for thus far.

We all packed in our vehicles and drove from Rick and Terry's over a couple mountains to get to New Kingston where my dad lived when he was a little boy.  The drive there was in itself a trip down memory lane.  Landscapes and landmarks took me back to a time in my life of simplicity and adventure.  I remembered the exact trip we were taking, except it felt like an eternity back then.  Now, it was a half an hour, if that.

When we finally got to my grandpa's old farm I could feel my insides bursting with excitement.  I felt like I could just pitch a tent and stay there for days.  I wanted to take in all the sights I could knowing that there was no telling when we'd swing back again to this piece of land, this piece of my history.  We drove up the side of the 350 acres my grandpa owned and peered back over the countryside speckled with fields of hay and rows of corn, meadows of alfalfa and forests of hardwood as far as the eye could see.  The majesty is hard to put into words.

When we came down the hill, we stopped at the old sap house where many a year was spent gathering buckets from tapped hard maples and boiling the sap to syrup in that old sugar shack.  Next to it were 4 chicken coups that had been hauled form Margaretville back in the 50's and salvaged all these years.  History was all over the place--everywhere I looked.

Eventually we made our way back down to the old homestead where my dad grew up and where I remember spending so many days of my childhood playing into the night with my cousins.  Kick the can, make believe, milking cows, catching frogs, bailing hay, playing cards, singing songs, butchering pigs, gathering eggs--you name it.  This was as close to the wild as anything I knew.  

I could feel my dad's presence all over the property.  I could imagine him growing from a little boy into a young man and then launching himself to Oswego where he was grafted into a new community.  But it was this farm that formed the man who raised me, and I could feel it's essence even in our little home with littler barns and tiny fields.  My dad was trying to recreate his childhood home even as we occupied 319 Tug Hill Rd. and began to subdue it.  Planting a garden, putting in a wood stove, cutting firewood, bush-hogging our two fields, taking trips in our wagon around the property just like we did when I was a little kid in the Catskills.  It all made sense now, perfect sense.

We walked the property as my uncle Rick retold stories of my dad shooting his big toe with a 22 rifle trying to kill rats in the barn.  We ventured through the old barn and reminisced about the cattle that used to occupy that place and the purpose of every parlor and pantry, every hay bow and heifer lean-to.  It was like being in an old movie, black and white and slow moving footage of yesteryear.  I didn't want to leave...I wanted to play again.

As we made our way down to the old house, we parked ourselves next to the old apple tree I used to climb and had a time together with family sharing what we loved about dad and mom, grandpa and grandpa, and this old piece of land that held so many core memories in our souls.  We poured out dad's ashes and my sister Bekah began singing "It is Well with my Soul" as we all joined in for three verses.  Tears flowed down my face as I thought of heaven and earth, the then and the now colliding in hold matrimony.  

I tool several pictures and we got in the car to head to head home.  

Those were the days.  These are the days.