Home is where the heart is

Ah, it's a crazy, beautiful time of year. I love it but I'm truly exhausted these days. There are now about 15 hours of daylight and I think we are squeezing every possible moment from every hour. I wish I could save some of these for February.

We got a new beef cow, Sam, who's about a week old in these pictures.

My brother-in-law decided four cows (with two on the way) weren't enough, so here he is. It's a bit dicey, bottle feeding a sweet little baby knowing in a couple of years he'll be dinner, but I think I've mastered it now. (Come to think of it, we have 70 meat chicks arriving today...)

The other animals are doing fine. Here's Gert (or Polly, I can never remember):

And here's one of the Steak brothers, Chuck or Flank (again, I can't remember -- and I didn't name them):

And, as always, piggies.

I love this sleeping pig picture mostly because of the pigeon on the roof. I don't know why. Click to make it bigger.

Calvin:

Maude the bantam and her adopted baby:

Maude is in the front. Her baby, soon to be a full-size laying hen (or rooster), is still a chick but is the same size as she is.

Just beyond the frame of the sleeping pig picture, to the left, is the new garden space. It's huge! These pictures are a couple of weeks old (I'm telling you -- I have not had a spare minute to blog), so imagine everything the same but bigger.

Radishes among the carrots:

Lettuce, lots of lettuce.

Peas (these are dwarf shell peas; I've got snap peas as well):

Onions:

Potatoes (we planted over 100, but about half drowned. We still have plenty!)

I've also got almost 30 tomato plants, basil, plus butternut squash, jack-o-lanterns, baking pumpkins, zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers. I admit I "weeded" one vine and I can't remember what it is, so scratch one of the last three in that list.

In between work, family, softball, gardening, farm work, yarn work (not much), cooking, cleaning (again, not much), and general spring insanity, my husband and I actually got to go on a date. Will wonders never cease.

Since, however, we are "too poor to even pay attention," as my husband says, we picked an unusual destination. An older man in the next town has a "museum," almost 6,000 square feet of collections of stuff, some antique, some not. That includes old gas pumps, Coke machines, tractors, farm tools, toasters, telephones, maps, brochures, menus, yardsticks, bottles, apothecary items, Victrolas, a couple of player pianos, oil cans, irons, lunchboxes, Coca-cola memorabilia, sprinklers, and so on and so on. It's amazing. It took over three hours for a whirlwind tour. This was my favorite find:

It's a great wheel, totally intact, right down to the braided cornhusk holding the spindle on.

 The catch, however, is that the man is a collector, not a dealer. He refuses to part with anything in his collection. He also gives tours but doesn't charge admission or even take donations.

I asked if he'd sell the wheel and he said, "I can't, because if I did, then I wouldn't have it." He is sitting on probably millions of dollars of stuff, some of it worth money individually, much of it worth money because of the completeness or size of the collection.

A lot of it isn't even old, it's stuff that we'd throw away, like take-out menus or McDonalds French-fry cartons or a SpongeBob lunchbox. Even a McDonalds ashtray -- remember when there was such a thing?

But when you see it in a collection that spans years or decades or even a century, it becomes part of an important timeline. He even has parking receipts from Disney World every year from 1976 to the present. (Parking has gone from $.50 to $12 a day, in case you were wondering.)

"Not everything here is old," he said. "But someday it will be."

So, I have to go get ready for work, but I'm going to leave you with a few of the 100 or so pictures I took of his collection. Collectors might go ga-ga over some of his stuff but he doesn't own a computer and when I asked if he ever sold or bought on eBay, he smiled and said, "How do you spell that?" This stuff is not going anywhere.

Many pictures below. (Everything is underlined from here on in, and I can't seem to make it stop.) Click for larger. See if you remember any of this from your youth. Or your grandmother's.

Wax cylinders, before vinyl records.















Old Mickey Mouse:





Ka-boom:



Not just another gadget:



Look closely:

























Anyone up for a cruise? Or not.







Mind boggling.

Comments

[AnnaMarie]

Wow! That's quite a collection.

Wes weeded an entire pea vine out yesterday. When he realized it he was seriously irked. I think he replanted it but I was walking away giggling a bit.... he get's so serious about the garden sometimes *g*

[Mary]

Now that is my idea of a dream date!!

[Kristen]

Talk about taking OCD to the max. Probably a good thing he is not selling as I'm sure one could get carried away buying this and that and that...

[Carole]

What a cool place!

[Carrie]

I couldn't off that calf. It's the white eyelashes.
That collection is like Cracker Barrel without the dumplings. And now I'm hungry for dumplings. I wish I knew how to make them like Cracker Barrel does...

[gayle]

Mind-boggling, indeed!
I went to a Farmer's Museum years ago, and was tickled to see a lot of "historical" kitchen implements that my grandmother was still using daily in her kitchen...

As always, love the pics of your critters!

[Jody]

Wow...now that was fun! Thanks.

[Hanna]

What a beautiful post! I LOVE thinking about June days in Vermont, with rhododendrons and long hours of sun and greenness streaming in every direction.

And it's fun to get a sense of that museum -- how fascinating!

[Panhandle Jane]

I love the museum! What a fascinating place. It's always a bit sobering to see how many items you recognize become museum artifacts as you grow older yourself.

[Elizabeth]

What a place!
oh and your farm isn't bad, either. :)
I know what busy June days are like. It's a good thing we have more energy in June than February but unfortunately there is no saving it up!

[Judy]

Wow!! Love it. What a great place to go.

[Sonya]

I can see how you could spend hours in there! We were in the market for a Hoosier cupboard when we first got married. We somehow found a guy who had a pole barn full of antiques, some of which he would sell. We had to climb over stuff to get to other stuff, but we found one that was made in the next county over. We bought it for a song and got invited to stay for dinner to boot.

[Sylvia]

What a date! Thank you for sharing.

[donna lee]

I love a place like that. What fun. I understand being too poor to pay attention. The electrical needs upgrading and the roof needs to be done. Dates like that are what we can afford. Good thing we like them.

[Kim]

You guys are so set up for feeding yourselves! I'm so jealous.

[Birdsong]

What great photos! Beadlizard sent me over, knowing my DH would be that fellow if I let him. There's a fine line between collecting and OCD, and I feel for the family members that will one day inherit his 'museum'. He does have a fantastic eye for displaying everything. I, too, am envious of the amount of food self-sufficiency displayed in the first photos!

[Monica]

Wow! what a museum! and he keeps everything so clean (or so it seems!)...how???

[Abby]

So, just where is that museum? We will me in MA in August, looking for things to do.

[Michelle Jimmo]

Where exactly is that Museum located? I'd love to load the car up and go down there. I think my nephew would get a kick out of it. I used to live in Weybridge so it can't too hard to locate.
: )

[Teyani]

what an incredible collection of stuff. Someday, someone will begin to sell it all (one of his heirs?) and that will be astonishing.

Speaking of astonishing... your farm is looking fabulous. Such dear critters! I was never able to eat/sell the ones we named...
Hopefully you have some helpers to assist with harvesting all those veggies.

[Julie]

Wow, that museum is something else. I could spend days looking over every thing. As always, I loved the pictures of your farm and the animals. The first picture was especially beautiful. Can I come visit? :-) LOL

Thanks so much for sharing!

[Mary Lou Keenan]

There's a fine line between collecting and hoarding, isn't there? what an amazing collection and kept so beautifully! How nice of the gentleman to let people see his lovely things. Your farm is looking lovely as well. Thank you for sharing your life in New England with us Floridians.
Blogless Mary Lou

[knitnana]

Mind Boggling indeed! And I have to tell you that I am almost certain I must have been by your house fairly closely at some point in my youth, b/c I REMEMBER it!
:)
Such is my memory. When I see the houses? I know I've been there, but I can't remember the time frame (just that I was a child, spending her summer in Vermont!).

Love the photos of the menagerie!
(((hugs)))

[Doris]

Sounds like a great date....and what a fun place!

[JessaLu]

ohmigod - the STEAK BROTHERS?!? roflmao!

What an awesome collection!