Having grown up here, it's fun to have a look back in time! The house in the foreground was for the hired hand's family. By the time of this photo, it sat empty and the garage just to its NE had even given up its place as the "Home of the GTO". The tree just to the west of that house was a large mulberry tree, where each summer we would lay sheets out underneath before shaking the mulberries off the branches so Mom could make us pies! She was a master pie baker. Our family's home is mostly hidden by trees in this photo. In the lower left corner the wagon hoist still sat where I practiced kicking field goals, and the corner of Mom's large garden, which had already shrunken considerably by this time as her children moved away, is shown just to its NW. This also shows the old beautiful clay block silo standing next to the Graettinger silo, which would have been nearly new at this time. The wooden cattle bunks running both south and west from the silo house are difficult to make out in this photo, but were set up to run wheelbarrows their full length out from the silo house to feed the cattle, typically a little over 300 head, that Dad would purchase in Nebraska at 500-800 lbs in late summer to finish feeding out. In my free time, if I wasn't playing catch in the yard with my brother Aaron or playing in the sand pile under the elm trees to the SE of our house, I could often be found playing in the haymow or grove with my nephew Teddy, building forts or making mudpies! (When we weren't getting into trouble smashing jars, setting fires, or painting the old pickup with oil so it wouldn't rust) We didn't own a riding mower back then, so mowing the grass further from the house was often assisted by a small herd of sheep. Once each year, though, the two Chris-Cut push mowers (certainly not OSHA approved!) would run all day mowing up the farmstead in preparation for our annual Memorial Day family reunion.