The Ranch (Jillibean Soup Layout)

I created this layout for a challenge at Birds of a Feather. I have been wanting to document the history of my Grandpa's house and my Grandpa's life. This challenge was just the push I needed to do a layout about the house and property. I think its missing something. Maybe something in the upper left? An updated layout may appear soon! ;-) I'm linking this to this weeks The Paper Variety Challenge.

I used the May kit from Birds of a Feather. LOVE the May kit full of Jillibean Soup yumminess!
I did a bit of stitching and layering.
Can you read that? haha! Okay if your interested, here is the journaling. Just a warning though, its long. I had to cut a few things out in order to fit in on these two pages and also shrunk the type quite a bit.

The Ranch, to me, is my Grandpa Read's (Herschel Read's) house that was built in the 18 's. *Interesting side note: The house was built by a one legged man.* The house was built on approximately 2000 acres which included part of Haystack Butte.

Perry Read (My Great Great Grandpa), in his early 20s, spent much of his first winter in the region with Barney Prine, who was determined to start the first town in the central part of this newly established state. Soon Perry Read met Hattie Montgomery (my Great Great Grandma) and married her. Perry Read and Hattie Montgomery were among the first of the white settlers in the Grizzly Mountain area, the first area of what would eventually become Jefferson County. Perry Read took a homestead in the Haystack Butte area, where he established a stage stop business. A small town grew in its shadow, called Perryville, in honor of Perry Read. There were two businesses there that eventually moved north a bit and helped form the town of Madras in the 1900's. Perryville had its own post office, run by Orace Collver out of his general store. This town was located where Haystack Reservoir is now located. When the railroad tracks were going up just a couple miles to the west, the entire town picked up and moved. By then, the community called itself Culver, a misspelled reference to the postmaster. Perry Read lived the life of a western stockman, indoctrinating his only son, James Perry Read, into the life as well.

James Perry Read (who went by Jim Read), as a young buck, raised wild horses. Jim would gather the wild horses up and drive them to a military fort in Brownsville, Oregon where he would sell them. One of my mom's (Jennifer Read Hatfield) fondest stories of her Grandpa was this: Grandpa Jim had a very very nice horse. He took a heard of wild horses over to Brownsville to sell. Someone offered him an outrageous amount of money at that time (my mom thought $100) as well as a cow and calf for his horse. Jim took the deal and it took him 30 days to walk the cow and calf from Brownsville to Culver. Along with raising wild horses, Jim cleared the land around the house and started growing wheat. This was around the time the town moved to where Culver is currently located now. James Perry Read (Jim Read) married Florence Belle Read. They had two sons, James Herschel and Howard Kenneth Read.

Herschel Read was born in 1912 and graduated in 1932. He served in the Navy in World War II, returning to take over the family ranch. Sadly, Howard Kenneth never returned from the war. When Herschel Read returned from the war and took over the farm, he didn't like horses and the farm was basically a dry wheat operation. So Herschel raised a few cattle for himself/the family and slowly added in cows in (this is in the late 1940's). Herschel quit growing wheat in late 60's early70's. There was a government program in the 60s' that subsidized farmers. The government paid farmers not to raise wheat due to a surplus. That is when Herschel could make more money NOT raising wheat than to raise wheat. This is when the Ranch turned from a farm to a ranch. During this time he allowed the cattle to graze in those fields. My mom (Jennifer Read Hatfield) was raised in this house. As a child she didn't always have plumbing. When built, there was no electricity or plumbing. They had an ice houses and an out houses. Over the years, the house was updated and added on too. They took out the stove that was in the middle of the living room and added a heating system, although the upstairs still has no heat. They added on a pantry, laundry room and bathroom on the backside of the house as well as a master bedroom and bathroom on the side.

I have so many fond memories of the ranch. One of my favorite memories is the Christmas Eves we spent out there. I don't remember a Christmas Eve as a child anywhere other than at the ranch with all the family. We had clam chowder and my moms cheese bread. I remember trying to sneak past my Uncle Pete to grab an olive when I wasn't supposed to. Uncle Pete turned it into a fun game. I also remember HOURS and HOURS of playing up in the bonus room upstairs with my brother and cousins. They had a stool that spun. We had contests to see who could stay on the longest as others spun us as fast as they could. There was an old secretary’s desk we used to play pretend with and a closet full of toys we liked. On warm summer days my cousin and I would take off exploring. One time the exploration landed us in a pen with a bull and scared the heck out of us. We also liked to walk a ways from the house to where there was an old broken down tractor. We'd pretend we were driving it. So much history, so many memories, The Ranch will forever hold a special place in my heart.

Kudos to you if you made it this far! Thanks so much for stopping by!