My Homeplace

 

In my early days of painting, I was being playful in this painting of our home place.

This painting was made from a picture of the Riddle home before my time. The people are Great-great Grandma Robey, Great-Grandma Riddle and Great-Grandpa Riddle. I have no idea who the people are on the horses. Maybe my dad and his brother???

This is not on our farm but it represents the way we used to bale hay using a FORD tractor and New Holland baler. The driver represented in this picture is our friend, Jim Smithberger.

This is a better likeness of the calf barn. It is one of my favorites. My sister and I spent a lot of time trudging our way to that barn to feed our calves.

These are some of our beef cows after we ceased the milking operation. You can see the calf barn in the background.

This is the old Mud Run Bridge. It was replaced and the path of the road changed when I was young. My dad would have ridden a horse across this on his way to Mud Run School.

This is from a picture of my son getting off of the school bus on Mud Run.

This is one of many pictures I tried to paint of our home place.

This painting was taken from a snapshot I had of the view from the front porch at the Riddle house where I grew up. In the distance you can see the Clair Bates farm.

                This was a horse we had that had a colt.

The Riddle Family (my paternal grandmother was a Riddle) had lived here prior to our occupancy. They used this building as an out kitchen. My mother used it for laundry and we took baths there in a galvanized tub in the summer. We had only cold water from the spring running to the house for several years until we got a water heater. We got a bathroom when I was ten years old.

This is a bridge that I believe is on Possum Road. It was painted for a friend.

This granary was built by my late paternal grandfather. We called him Poppy. He had trouble keeping us youngsters out of the way when he was working on it.

                    This is another view of Wildwood Farm.

This is the house where I grew up. It was the former Riddle Place, built by my Riddle great-grandparents in 1900. We milked cows in that barn, threw ensilage out of that silo, mowed the yard’s grass, played hide and seek with friends and caught lightning bugs and put them into a jar in that yard. The corn crib was used to store corn and later on we used it as a chicken house. Holding the burlap bags while Poppy shoveled corn into them in that corn crib was often my job. You had to hold the sack just right. Then he was off to the mill in Caldwell to get the “feed ground.”

The front step on my grandparents’ house said Wildwood Farm. We never knew who gave it that name but that is what I call it. I loved this place. This farm and the Riddle farm (our farm) joined so they were farmed together.)

This is not on our farm but I post it here because of the Ford Tractor and New Holland Baler. My dad sold both Ford and New Holland so they are quite familiar to me. Putting up hay is familiar, too! That’s Jim Smithberger and his son Alex in that painting. 

This was an early attempt at painting the old tobacco barn which later became our calf barn. We also stored hay there.

The house here was being used as a sheep barn when my grandparents prepared it for living. When they lived there one walked from the house to the kitchen for meals. I have so many memories here. My son never knew my grandparents. He was exploring the place in this painting with his bow and arrow.

My grandmother’s kitchen was separate from the house. In this building she cooked and on one end separated cream to sell. Besides a cream separator there was a large trough filled with water that kept the cans of cream cold until we took it to Barnesville to sell at the creamery. The upstairs was used for bathing and laundry as well as storage.

Since we had dairy animals my sister and I took dairy rather than beef  calves to the fair. This is my sister with her calf, Star. Our advisor was the late John R. Watson. I was showing my calf for him to advise me when it ran off, dragged me across a rock and tore the nail off of one of my toes. (Maybe shoes would have been a good idea!) The hazard of calf showing!

This was the old granary that my grandfather tore down. The barn was in use. The car is the old Chevy they had. I guess my dad was washing the car there in this painting.

This is our old barn where we milked cows and sold Grade A milk. It was a lot of work and there are lots of memories. The barn was gray not painted red but “painter’s license was used here.”

This is how it looked at my grandparents’ old farm one of the last times we passed there. The out kitchen is now used for sheep to run in and out and as we passed the other day I noticed that the barn has been torn down. 

An early attempt at painting a picture of my dad, my paternal grandfather and grandmother. I couldn’t do their faces but their body language does speak to me! Notice the old granary and the barn in the background. Can you tell that the lady in the middle thought she was the boss? Ha!!