This is my Grandparents Farm on Belgium Ridge - where I practically LIVED during my youth! They built the house in 1950. The original house which once sat to the left of the new one, was moved and converted into a grainery for oats. It is the taller white building in the middle of the shot, right next to the chicken coop - the longer, low one with 4 windows in it to its right. Grandparents were Bill and Bessie Sisbach. Grandpa was gone when this was taken as I see some of my dad's Angus cattle out behind the barn. To the left of the grainery sits a small machine shed which housed the Farmall M & A, and the oats binder they used to harvest oats with. It looks like Grandma had hung her dish cloths out to dry on this day. In expanding the picture, but barely seen here, behind the towels is her 1966 Chevy truck. She drove that to town and church every week. It was a 4 on the floor and had one of the tightest clutches on it that we have ever known. She had to have a left leg of steel to push that darn thing in. The truck is still in operation and owned by my Aunt, who acquired it in 1993, when the farm was sold and Grandma forced to move to town and live with my mom until she entered a nursing home at 101. In between the old barn (cherry red paint) and the machine shed in the front of the shot, sits two corn cribs. The old wooden one backed up to the barnyard, where you see a wooden gate sitting at. The metal one had the name MARTIN stenciled on the 2 doors and sat on 8 concrete pilings keeping it off the ground, and a favorite place for the chickens to come to and try to get corn through the slatted floor. The large machine shed in the front center was built in 1963. It sits on the same spot that an old tobacco shed blew over at in a bad storm in 1962. Grandpa and I spent a LONG time taking nails out of the wood from it. Grandpa's brother Harold Sisbach also had an identical machine shed built on his farm just east of the local radio station. Harold's daughter and husband live at that place now. My ponies had their stalls, just on the other side of those 2 big white doors you see on the shed. How my heart misses this farm! I did all of my growing up out there from little on til I moved away at 18. So many fond memories are floating through my head. I pretty much know every inch of the farm and its ditches! I would take a pony and ride out before milking time and bring the cows in from the far west part of the farm. During the day, I rode them all over the place, as crops and grandparents allowed. This farm is an integral part of my being and soul. I would do about anything to be out there, if not with my dad at his stockyards north of Viroqua. It is so nice to see a picture of the place before others owned it and changed so many things. The barn was torn down just 2 weeks after Grandma moved to town. The house has been added on to, and the chicken coop is now farther out in a field to its North. Originally it was located to the right of the wooden corn crib and housed grandma's hogs. Easy to feed them corn from that location!