The History of Patchwork Acres
Circle T Patchwork Acres is a family owned farm bought by my husbands Pawpaw, Lloyd Tanner, back in 1976. He intended it to be a huge 'playground get-away' for family and friends. The kids and grandkids all grew up spending summers learning about the farm life. Everyone pitched in caring for the critters Pawpaw always kept for the kids to enjoy, working on the old Oliver tractor, putting up new fencing and replacing or mending the old, planting crops.... always endless chores to do on a farm. Pawpaw wanted to teach his grandkids to be hard workers and thinkers, not to be afraid of taking something apart and fixing it themselves. My husband and his brothers often recall some of Pawpaw's old sayings like 'Work smarter, not harder', ‘You break it…you fix it’, 'Use your head for something besides a hat rack', 'Use your head, not mine', and 'You just have to be smarter than what your working on' to name a few.
From the time my husband and I started dating, I was included in the big 4th of July family picnics held at the farm. Boy oh boy... what a family and what a time everyone did have! Homemade ice cream, a smoker full of juicy meats cooking all day long, a flurry of activities and kids going in every direction...not to mention the one bathroom! LOL. All that would finally wind down to a huge meal, a hayride, some fireworks and a nice fire in the fire pit with roasted marshmellows and talk of good times. You just couldn't beat it!
Don't get me wrong...I spoke of all the pitching in and hard work, but it wasn't all work and no play by any means! Forget TV and video games though.... around the farm they were never missed. The kids, young and old spent their time outside, blazing new trails through the woods, hunting, fishing, learning to drive in a beat up truck named Old Yeller, pitching horse shoes, playing Croquet around the cow patties and goat berries in the pasture, riding horses and ponies....it was non-stop fun from sun up until well after dark!
Pawpaw was a Shriner clown and on many of our visits we were all dressed up and painted as clowns and would travel to nearby towns to be in the parades. It was never a dull moment around this man! He was constantly full of pranks and you learned quickly to 'watch your back'! He loved to dare the kids to put the mean old Billy's nose to the ground, or catch the old goose named Henry for the promise of a $1! Problem was, it usually wasn't the Billy's nose that hit the ground first and that goose was meaner than.... you know what! Pawpaw's favorite place was in his swing in the shade where he could watch all the going's on and instigate some trouble every chance he got. One of his favorite things to do was sit there with this fiberglass rod hidden beside him that was hooked up to the fence charger. He positioned a metal chair nearby so that when some poor, unsuspecting, person came to sit down out of the hot sun for a minute, he could reach over and touch that rod to the metal chair! You'd all the sudden see someone jump up outta that chair and look around it... Pawpaw with the straightest face you ever saw! The funniest part was, you'd be amazed at the folks that would then sit right back down in that chair for yet another buzz! Usually it didn't take more than 2 times for folks to figure out what he was up to and by this time Pawpaw had lost that straight face and would be just a laughing. :-)
Ahhhh the memories! Time has gone by and Pawpaw is no longer with us, but he lives on in our hearts and in his farm where hardly a day goes by that something will remind us of him. Pawpaw always called his farm the Circle T and we have respectfully added Patchwork Acres for the purpose of registering our livestock.