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Our Story
Dick Rees,
Owner
I remember each area of the farm having its own scent. The fenced-in yard smelled of trees and various flowers. There was a metal slide anchored to a tree next to the sidewalk. In that tree, about five feet up, was a knot hole, where we kept a crumpled piece of wax paper to polish the slide to make it slick and fast.
Out of the front gate was a large bank barn with cattle stalls in the bottom, a place for the wagon on the main floor, and a hay loft in the top. I used to look way up into the loft and see this huge claw hanging from the rafters; I always imagined it dropping down and swallowing me up.
To the east, through the gate, was the machine shed, built from old railroad shacks from the 1940s. I can still remember the smell of creosote wafting from a huge overhead beam, the old 1946 BF Avery tractor, and bucket of oil and nails inside the tractor stall. When my dad was my age, he would sit in the shed on rainy days and fish nails out of the oil to straighten them on a tree stump.
Now, that old tractor’s been restored and is proudly displayed during my hometown of Sigourney, IA’s Fourth of July parade. The plow sits outside my own barn. I salvaged that old beam and even now, I still catch a whiff of creosote when I walk into my own shop today.
Carol Rees,
Owner
Having grown up in town, I am definitely a country girl at heart! From my youngest years, I looked forward to Saturdays when my dad and I would go to my grandparents’ 180-acre farm, nine miles from my house. It was my “happy place.” Going to the farm meant I had to roll out of bed early, and If I got up early enough, Dad made me breakfast: farm-fresh scrambled eggs.
My grandparents had a small dairy and beef operation, grew the normal crops of corn, soybeans, and wheat, and had what seemed to a little kid like thousands of chickens; in reality, there were maybe a hundred with a few ducks, geese, and turkeys sharing the chicken yard. We’d pull in the driveway, and before I even headed to the house, down to the barn I went. Just had to see what was new since the last time I was there. It may have been a new cat or better yet…kittens! With a dairy farm, all the local cats made the milk house their home. At one point, there must have been thirty cats waiting for milk fresh from the cow; they had it made.
When I was younger, I had the easy chores of collecting, washing, and putting eggs in cartons. Monday was the day Grandma and Grandpa delivered eggs to their customers in Palmyra and Hannibal. At milking time, my job was putting feed in the stalls and pouring the fresh milk from the milk pail through the strainer and into the milk can. And, if I was really lucky, there was a long-lashed, blue-eyed calf that needed a bottle!
As I got older, my chore list grew, and during planting and harvest time we’d head to the farm when Dad got home from his day job. During the summer, there were vegetables to pick and can, chickens to dress, and hay and straw to bale and put up in the barn. I can’t count the number of bales I bucked with Dad, Grandpa, and Grandma.
Even today, when I get that first whiff from a bale and feel the twine on my fingers, it takes me back to the farm -- a place where things were simple and good, and I didn’t have a care in the world. I learned how to drive on Dad’s Oliver 77; Grandpa had an Oliver 88. While both those tractors are long gone, I’d like to find one and restore it someday.
I have a lot of fond memories of my grandparents and the farm. The farm was in our family for over 50 years. While times have changed, the values I learned down on the farm have shaped who I am today.
