A Family Roots Vacation!

This is my husband and Mr. Ed Bruington on the old Thomas farm in Independence, Kansas. Ed purchased the Thomas farm from Randy's grandma back in 1966. He lived there for many years and farmed the property, but then moved into town and started leasing the farm out to renters. The renters usually aren't farmers, so the property has really gone downhill. We nearly died when we learned that Mr. Bruington had sold the farm to someone else just two weeks before our visit. There's no way we could have afforded to buy the property, but it would have been nice to dream about it for a while and approach other family members about the possibility of purchasing it again! Mr. Bruington only has one arm. Apparently he was involved in a farm injury many years ago. He was using a thrasher, I think that's what it's called (I don't know anything about farm equipment!). The thrasher got hung up with some debris and when Mr. Bruington tried to free that debris, the thrasher caught his arm. After yelling for help and realizing that no one would ever hear him and he would likely bleed to death, he took his pocket knife and cut his arm completely off at the elbow so he would be freed to seek help. OMG! Randy had heard stories about this accident, so when Mr. Bruington stepped out of his truck and only had one arm, we knew he was the man who had in fact purchased the farm back in 1966!

Here's a picture of the old outhouse on the Thomas farm! I'm sure there are some interesting stories about this, but you can just use your imagination! I'm sure the Thomas boys used it a time or two!

That long building you see in the back is the chicken coop! I couldn't believe how big it was. When Randy would talk about the chicken coop, I always thought it was small, but it's not. Randy said it had three long tiers of coops on both sides of the building. Can't you just imagine how nasty that coop would be sitting out in the Kansas heat? I wish we could have gone in there, but the grasses around it had grown up too high and we were worried about snakes and ticks! From the fence and going towards the chicken coop was the chicken yard. Randy remembers his grandma going out there and feeding all the chickens. Sometimes she would let him help. Now it's all covered over with weeds.

You'll get a kick out of this! We took our dog Otto on the trip to Kansas with us, which was fun in some respects and a nightmare in others! We visited a cemetery that had many members of the Thomas family buried back in the 1800s and early 1900s. Since dogs were not permitted in the cemetery, we had to leave Otto in the air-conditioned car while we got out to see the gravesites. It nearly drove him crazy not to be out there with us. All of a sudden we heard a "clunk," only to realize that while Otto was looking out the window at us, he stepped on the lock, locking us out of the car! Boy, he sure got us, didn't he? He was in the nicely air-conditioned car and we were locked out in the 107-degree-temps (heat index of 113)! That'll teach us to not include him anymore! Smart dog!

A Family Roots Vacation!

This is "the pond" on the old Thomas farm property that Randy and his brothers used to fish at early in the morning. They'd take what they caught to grandma and she'd fry it up for breakfast, along with farm-fresh eggs. Randy remembers how she used to serve Tang, instead of fresh orange juice, and they'd drink it in old jelly jars! Grandma also had an old stump where she would kill chickens and then cook fried chicken. Randy remembers how delicious it was. The old stump is gone - thank God!

Hunter in the barn. The barn was filled with debris, which was such a big disappointment. We could go up some steep stairs into the haylofts above, where Randy remembers swinging from one loft to the other. We found some really old tools in the barn, like the hook that is used to hitch your horse to a plow - the kind you'd walk behind. We also found some hay hooks and a tool that was inserted into a cow's nose to lead it around. The current landowner was gracious enough to give us those old Thomas tools - and we glady took them! We also came home with some planks of wood that were from the original cabin that John C. Thomas built in 1876. These items are priceless to us!

A front view of the barn. Wish I could have gotten that ugly boat out of the picture! It was 107 degrees on the day we visited the farm - hot as blazes! We would have enjoyed staying for hours if it hadn't been so hot!

This past week, my family decided to take a trip to Independence, Kansas, to visit the old Thomas Farm. For years, we've heard stories from my husband about how things were when he would visit his grandparents on the farm. Like in the morning, his grandma would send him out to the chicken coop to get farm-fresh eggs - and how it hurt because the hens would peck at his hand when he'd go underneath them to "fetch" the eggs. They'd also walk down to the pond and fish, and then grandma would cook up the perch they caught for breakfast - along with the farm-fresh eggs - and how wonderful his farm memories are. We've heard about how they'd play in the barn up in the hay loft - and just story after story after story about "the farm."

Well, we finally got to see the farm - and while it was quite disappointing that it isn't being kept up as nicely as the Thomases kept it up, it was still a very special day to spend some time at the farm. As you stand and look up at the barn, it's huge, so I can only imagine what it must have looked like to Randy as a little boy! Our son, Hunter, who is in one of the pictures, told us on the way home that one day, when he can, he's going to buy back the Thomas farm so it will be in the Thomas family again! I want to post more pictures about our family roots vacation so I can preserve the memories, but I wanted to start with the barn. I will always remember the way it smelled, the way it looked, how I felt just being in it and realizing the history it had. I can just see my husband as a little boy having the time of his life swinging from hayloft to hayloft up on the second level. What great memories he has of that barn - and now so do I!