OMG! I've Been Hacked!

Hacked by my very own daughter!  (Please see blog post below this one.)

The little darling has always been good about making her own unique, creative greeting cards for special occasions for her ol' mom and pop, but this one will stand out as a real winner for some time to come.

The pictures, all but the one in the bottom middle row of her and her sweetie, were taken long ago and where she dredged them up is a wonder.  I feel compelled to write a bit explaining each one.  (Click to biggify the pictures, if you wish.)

Going across the top row from left to right, the first one is of Papa Pea plowing up the very first garden we had back in Illinois.  He was still going to school and working part time while I was working full time off the homestead.  We'd already starting keeping chickens, ducks, geese and dairy goats.  And a tiny fawn who's mother had been hit by a car.

Next is an even earlier picture taken of me pretending to smoke a pipe figuring if Papa Pea could do it, so could I.  We were living in my grandma's house at the time.  Grandpa had died and Grandma didn't want to live alone so she packed her suitcase and took to living with one or the other of her seven kids, all of whom welcomed her.  We rented her house until we moved to the thirty acres Papa Pea's folks owned out in the country.

Fast forward 10-12 years, we had made the move to our first piece of land here in Minnesota, little Chicken Mama was three years old and we were working off our tushes clearing about 20 acres of the long since abandoned  eighty acre homestead so we could grow hay to feed our horses and goats.  And Coco, our donkey.  Oh my, the days Chicken Mama and I spent on that tractor while Papa Pea was teaching.

Next row first picture, I'm getting in wood in an effort to heat (futility personified) the tin can of a trailer we first lived in on the eighty acres.

Middle is a present day picture of Chicken Mama and her partner still smiling (silly kids) after a day's work of hard labor.

Last but not least, Papa Pea and a pre-teen Chicken Mama ready to go off on an afternoon ride on one of his (many over the years) motorcycles.  I suspect it was a reward for her after a day of (enforced child labor) helping us cut wood for one of the side businesses we had which helped us stave off starvation when we were getting established up here.

There's nothing like pictures to bring back memories, is there?  Thanks for the Valentine memories, dear daughter of ours!