June 2, 2000

In 1976, we bought a small farm on the Brazos River in Bosque County. No one had lived on it or had livestock there since the 1940s. Needless to say, it was pretty much a wilderness when we took ownership. The fields were ripe with mesquites, prickly pears, and scrub cedars. One was a wild plum thicket. The road going to where there had once been a house was essentially a gulley, all grown up with weeds. The fences were pretty much gone and the fence rows overtaken by briars and wild vegetation. One thing was certain. It was going to require a lot of work to get this place in any shape to farm.

The first order of business, of course, was to build a good road down to the river, so family and friends would have easy access to a fishing hole. My brothers came and helped Mel put in a tinhorn by the gate so we could drive in and out without dragging all the innerds out of our truck every time we entered the property. Then Mel hired neighbors, Luke and Phil Vaughn, to build us a road. Later, Mel bought his own bulldozer to maintain it, but not before he’d brought home a good used tractor. Soon, my husband spent weeks on end, pushing and plowing, rearranging the landscape with his new toys.

Meanwhile,our son, Eric, who was just eight-years-old at the time, and I drug and stacked brush and hauled off all kinds of debris in the back of Ol’ Green. Together, we must have picked up and stacked a gillion rocks. Just how many became clear that summer when Eric brought home a little book he’d made at Vacation Bible School entitled “My Family.” Every page featured stick figures holding a rock, putting a rock in the truck, or digging one up with a crowbar!

Next, Mel decided the lower limbs of trees needed to be removed so we could drive under them. We had some huge oak trees. He could stand on the ground and cut some of the branches. Then he would get up in the trees with a chainsaw and fling himself from limb to limb like an orangutan, whittling away dead wood, while I watched in horror far below, convinced I was about to become a young widow at any moment.

Seems like these rituals went on forever. Finally, we waited for a good rainy spell to burn brush piles. No sense in letting them go to waste, so we hosted a major weiner roast while we were at it.

Once the land was cleared, we started building fences, which took more than a few days to do. Afterwards, Melvin planted coastal and sudan. Then he laid out an orchard, hooked up his auger and started digging holes for a hundred pecan trees. He whitewashed young trees down in the river bottom, had everything looking manicured.

Everyone that had seen the farm “before” and “after” was amazed. One Sunday, the preacher came out to see it for the first time. Afterwards, I overheard him and Mel talking out on the porch. The preacher said, “My, oh my, son. You and the Good Lord sure do have yourselves a mighty fine little place here.”

Mel replied, “Yessir, we do fer a fact. But you shoulda seen it back when the Good Lord had it all by hisself!”