First Pictures -- Montana

The first photos of us that we have in our possession.  West Kootenai, Montana, about the autumn of 1993. It was the year I had to dig up and replace the entire water line from the well which was down the hill to the right and the tank which was up the hill to the left.  This shows part of the wood supply we needed for each winter. The shed had to be pretty much full of wood to last all winter. It is still quite empty here. And of course, everybody's favorite horse, Root Beer.

Rachel asked recently for these first pictures.  I found them and scanned them.   Not the best quality but that doesn't matter.  These pictures contain priceless memories.  Those days have slipped away much too fast.

You can download the pictures by right clicking on them.   --Dad

Growing up with Horses

Rebecca Graber shared this on Facebook 16 March 2014 as a comment to a thread on Amish and Beyond.

My Dad was always training horses for people so we'd have all kinds of horses to drive when we worked in the field. But Dad always made sure he'd hitch the less trained ones with a solid well trained one and I never had a runaway till the day my older brother (married )was in charge to help out while my Dad was in Hot Springs getting relief for his back. My brother would not listen to me about which horses to put beside each other and made me put the ones together that were always fighting..... I made a couple rounds in the field with the disc and the four horse team when the one horse got mad and went after the other one and they started going in circles. I hung on for dear life, praying that somehow I would be able to stay out from under the disc .... All of a sudden they took off running across the field and I fell off as they crashed into a fence and a neighbor came to my aid.... That's when I started having the problem that I later learned was a hiatal hernia... When Dad came home he took me to the chiropractor which helped but of course didn't fix the hernia .... Needless to say that brother is not my favorite and for some reason he will not speak to me at funerals etc..