Pictures from when we lived outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, on a Truck farm.

In 1985 we moved to Raleigh, NC. I was pregnant with our third child and at first we stayed with a family in town.

Then we moved out here, to a Truck farm, where our landlord grew several small plots of different vegetables. He also had some cattle. 

 The roof was covered with tin and the trees standing nearby were pecan trees and the nuts would fall off at random and make a loud noise on the roof. It was only two bedrooms so the older two kids shared one and we kept the baby with us in our room. We moved there from Ohio and had only a few pans, dishes, clothes and toys but no TV, radio or other conveniences.  It would get really hot sometimes since it was August when we moved from town to this place, 65 miles from Raleigh.  The only thing we could do was to take a cool bath.

On the front porch there was a swing that you can barely see on the right side of the porch.  The view from that swing is what you see on the picture on the right.   Even though we didn't even have a telephone or a fan, a TV or radio, I enjoyed the quiet, peaceful days with just my children and nature. My then husband left for work early each morning around 6 AM and got home about 12 or 13 hours later. 

Many an hour was spent on the porch swing, reading to my children, watching them play, or nursing my baby. We were home schooling too.

Looking out from the porch you could see the woods and cabin that the landlord used when he came to work in his fields. The cabin had enough room for him and his sons and wife to stay on the freezing nights occasionally threatening his strawberry crop. They stayed up most of the nights tending to the plants, irrigating them with water from his pond, which was warmer than the freezing air.  He also used the front screened in porch to sell his produce. 

We eventually ended up moving into that cabin for a couple of months because he sold the little home we were staying in. Another interesting thing about the little house was that to get to it you had to drive through a corn field. Then you had to pass a little cemetery which was close to the house. It felt like the house was haunted too, and I am not saying that because of the cemetery.  I grew up across the street from a large cemetery and never felt anything like I felt there.  This place had something sinister that didn't want us there.  We were glad to go down the hill to move into our landlord's cabin.

Before we go to there, here is what our backyard looked like. It was a nice pond that my kids liked to play near.  Usually just after noon you would see a neighbor woman (to call people neighbors doesn't really describe it, we were in the middle of this farm and the nearest people were pretty far away) with a fishing pole and she sat and sat all day until she caught their supper.