Spring Mill Park Sept. 2, 2016

Spring Mill Park Sept. 2, 2016

The night before our wedding, we took Giz, Grampy, my mom and step-father out to eat at the Spring Mill Inn.  It was such a memorable evening for me, nothing fancy--but very calm and relaxing.

http://www.stateparks.com/spring_mill_state_park_in_indiana.html

This is Donaldson Cave, they don't want people going in as much any more.  I think that is because of the virus the bats were getting; the white nose disease....

You can barely see this mushroom, but if you look beneath:

How cool, if you take the time to look down!

One of the reasons I like this park so much, is because it is an Old Woods park---they don't cut down any trees, and the ones that fall are pushed to the side of the trails and left to decay in peace.  Due to the un-touched nature, you walk through the wide space with a high canopy of trees above you. Most forests in Indiana have been cleared, especially in the 1800's, but this property has been preserved for hundreds of years due to one man's foresight many years ago.

Some of the trees are just massive!

Because the ground doesn't get very much sunlight, you can see through the woods particularly well.  Many days I've seen whole herds of deer, but not this visit!  Due to the enomous amounts of rainfall this year, I saw more tree's down than I have ever before.  Many of the sink holes had really grown and deepened so much it was surprising.  

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The Farm, the two old chicken coops, and our Wedding Tree Sept. 1-4, 2016

The Farm, the two old chicken coops, and our Wedding Tree 

Sept. 1-4, 2016

This is the coop behind the farmhouse, you can just make out the top of the old out-house on the left of the picture, with bushes growing up around it.  
For Labor Day weekend, Dh, Dd, and I spent a few days down at the farm--where we used to live.  The farm has been in the family for generations.  Some cousins, that live on the other side of the road, now pay us to farm our land, so we don't have to.

The old coops haven't been used in decades.  See the pretty spider web I tried to capture?

Here is the Nesting Box.  The girls walk up a ramp on the side to the 'hallway' behind the boxes.  They had, I think, three 'floors' to choose from.  I opened one level for this top picture.  There are six boxes on this row.

This is what the box looked like when all closed up and ready for the chickens.  To get the eggs you'd have to open the front door, which is the top picture.

Here is a close up of the inside.  You can see the walkway behind the box.  Currently, there is a lot of leaves in the boxes; perhaps a home to some mice!

This is one of the old feeders.  The top piece of wood is on a swivel, so it turns around and around--probably to keep the chickens off the top, so they don't poop in the food.

A close up of the chicken coop behind the farm house.  One of the nicest things is that Grampy and his father, built everything themselves.  They cut the trees, waited a year for the wood to cure, then processed the trees into lumber, and then built their farm house with a instruction book they bought from a Sears Roebuck catalog!  Every thing for the farm, the chickens...whatever...they built from scratch.  It is great to look back at how they built everything, their ingenious touches that made things work just right.

This is the other coop---I didn't get a lot of pictures of it this time.

With our anniversary coming up, I wanted to take some pictures of the tree we were wed under.  We had a very small wedding--14 guests!  I made my bouquet of flowers, paid $12.00 for my "wedding dress," Dh slow cooked lots of meat in his grill, my step-father made potato salad, and Giz bought a cake.  Then we went to Red River, in Arkansas to go fly-fishing for our honeymoon.  It was a beautiful day, on the beautiful farm we used to live on.

You can see the leaves of the Black Walnut tree.  If you look closely you can see the green walnuts.

Grampy put up the swing chair for Dd to swing on.

Here come Dh and Dd walking out the gate to the tree.

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