Farm & Ranch | Farm Country Crafts

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the heat and the drought. We will never forget the summer of 2011. This blog originates approximately 50 miles southwest of Texarkana, Texas. This area usually gets plenty of rainfall each year to keep the lawns and pastures green and lush in the spring. The summers are mostly hot and dry. Not this year. We have had 70 plus days of 100 degrees or above temperature this spring and summer, with more hot days expected before fall comes along and cools us off a bit.

The farmers are running out of grazing and water for their cattle. We are losing a lot of large and small trees in the woods. The Texas Ag folks are telling us this is a no-brainer. Get rid of your cattle NOW. This is not an ordinary drought. They are predicting it will last through November 2011. Other forecasters are saying it might even last through 2012.

Wildfires have destroyed many thousands of acres of land. More than seventeen hundred homes have been lost, and 2 lives have been lost so far.

Our local newspaper recently published some common summer heat jokes. Here are just a few.

You know you live in Texas because during the summer…

Cows are giving evaporated milk.
The trees are whistlin’ for the dogs.
Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hardboiled eggs.
Hot water now comes out of both taps.
You can make instant sun tea.
If the temperture drops below 95 you feel chilly.
You learn that a seat belt makes a pretty good branding iron.
You discover that in the summer you can drive your car with two fingers.
You realize that asphalt has a liquid state.
The birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.
It is so dry the cows are eating the barbed wire fences.

Fall has finally arrived and temperatures have begun to drop.

We survived another Texas summer.

Hope you had a great summer!

If old barns could only talk, just think of all the tales that could be told and all the memories shared. Children playing, horses being fed, and all the hay being tossed into and out of the loft.

This is the old barn that is currently on our property. I do not know the year that it was built. I do know the old house that I will be posting about later was built in 1856. This barn is still standing and is in reasonably good working order. We use it mostly today for storage. It has 2 wooden cribs which were used for storing saddles, harnesses, feed, and other equipment. It also has 4 stalls which were used for feeding horses.

I have been told that people traveling from one town to another used this place as an overnight stop to rest, and also to feed and rest their horses.

These are pictures from inside the old barn. Most of it is made of old or rough lumber. They used both large rocks and tree stumps for the foundation. Bois d’arc (bodark) post were used as supports. Some of the feed troughs were made from split trees.

The last picture shows the feed trough, which was made from hollowing out a large tree. It is about 6 feet long. It must have taken many hands to get this trough installed.