Where I Grew Up

It must have been wonderful to grow up there with all those fields around you.

Fascinating...

Lovely Cat....all that space ..........

Thanks..yes it was...when I look back on it of course I took it for granted as a child and a teenager..lol...

My Great Grandfather( Sami from Tromso) and Great Grandmother (Norwegian from Oslo) settled 400 acres when they immigrated here...this is part of that land.
My dad bought this piece from my Grand Parents (English/Scottish Grandmother) and they lived across the field you can see on the left. that alone was one acre..Dad grew his hay crops there for our cows.

The land you see beyond the pond was the pasture for the cows and was about 15 acres.

There were relatives on all three sides..my Great Aunt and Uncle lived to the right of the photo through the trees and my Dads Sister and her husband and family lived up on the hill to the left of the field and of the pasture.

Dad built the pond him self, it had been a little creek running there...
He built a dam with a culvert in it. He had Frogs and Ducks on the pond..I loved the bridge and ran down the hill and across that bridge many times as fast as I could go..

What wonderful memories and interwoven family history.. :o) xxx

Go Cat Go...run like the wind...x

what a wonderful upbringing Cat.. i love the fact that we have been able to bring our kids up here,,,

A wonderful setting, and I love the family land. We have a big patch of family ranch land many relatives still inhabit as well. I took it all for granted as a child too. Pond was a great idea.

You must have been very happy :o)

brilliant photo

Sounds like you had a really brill childhood living there.

What wonderful memories you have,and so nice to have the photo of your home.
Do any of your Family still live in the area?it looks a childs paradise to me.:o)
All that space to run off your energy...wonderful...

For all the things we go through growing up, it was a wonderful place to find little spaces of serenity. I learned to love the earth and how growing things were so much a part of my life and still are.
I spent hours by the little creek, before Dad damned it up. I played with crawdads, periwinkels and dragonflies there all the time. I could get into the stream easily, but loved the pond too. Luckily I was a bit older and thought rafting on it was a great adventure.. :o)
In the back of the pasture were vine maple that my brother, sister and cousins and I loved climbing and bounced through the limbs on. Needed no park with a playground...everything was our play ground. LOL..Also there were eyes on us everywhere..we were always running free...but with the relatives all around, it was easy to know what we were up to...if they could not see us they could always hear us and our pack of dogs that ran with us..Grandma's dog Mrs. Cooper, our dog, Rinny, My Aunt and Uncles dog Jeff, my cousins dogs, Spark and Mingo, not one of those dogs ever knew what a leash was, they lived outside and took care of their territories and guarded their children and played with us and each other...very strange the way we live now.. here... very strange indeed...yes we had fun...life was not too bad there at all.. :o)

No we have all moved away...but the road there is still named after my Great Grandfather. Zachariasen Martine Christensen...they just have M.Christensen on the road sign. My parents were the last to leave..but there is the Highland Lutheran Church there built on the original 400 acres that my Great Grandmother had my Great Grandfather build... :o) my Grandfather was the first baby baptised in the church..It is now a historical building and a new church has been built next to it that holds more people. There is also the Highland Cemetary where many of my relatives have found their resting place. From Great Grandparents to my parents. Aunts, Uncles and cousins. There is a Plaque by my Great Grand Parents plot thanking them for their work pioneering the area. That was nice to see the last time I was there. It is a legacy...

wow what a history u have with the place.....the memories sound wonderful Cat.

.i grew up on council estate with no park..but we had fun playing out in the street..only three neigbours had cars so it was safe back then...and all our relatives lived near by so we were being watched too......lol

its not the same there anymore and we were lucky to be able to move our children to the countryside....its been lovely watching them climb trees and run around the place with our dogs....hopefully they will look back with lovely memories like yours Cat....x

It is certainly a lovely way to raise children if you can.
I raised mine in the country on 5 acres with dogs and neighbors kids and their dogs running and playing in the fields and the creeks...for 14 years.

Then we moved to this small town. I was a single mom and worked down town at one point in a small bakery. In the summer my children ran in and out of the bakery and onto the beaches close by like it was all home..and the towns people came in and told me where they had seen my children..and they kept watch over them.

I knew so many people here then. It has changed in the last 23 years I have to say..I know hardly anyone anymore. Just the ones who used to come to my store and I only got to know a handful of them really well.

we live three miles from the nearest village...since my children left the village school i have had very little contact with the people there....but i still see them from time to time in the local supermarket...

Same here...there are two local grocery stores..one really big one and one just a bit smaller. I can walk to the smaller one, it is only a quarter mile away. I used to never go to either one and not see someone I knew. It has changed so much...not often I do know anyone these days. A lot of transition it seems like. At least I have been meeting more of my neighbors along my route to the grocery..lol..there are a lot of new ones in my neighborhood, since I first moved into this house 15 years ago.

You sound as though you had an wonderful childhood.mine was too,as we moved up to the Lake district,through my dads work when I was aged 7,and how different it was from Yorkshire,with its textile industry,where the air was laden with smoke and polution from all the mill chimneys.Healthwise,we benefited
almost at once,as almost everyone suffered with chest infections etc,and I missed a lot of schooling then.We had fields,woods rivers to explore,and never any fears of not being safe.I came back to where my roots are,after 22 years,and I love it here
just as much for different reasons,but looking back,I have some wonderful memories of that special time,and we still visit friends whenever we can.Sadly,the textile industry went in to decline,when the cheap imports flooded the country,and it was so hard for all,losing their jobs,as they had never done anything else,including our family too.It sounds like something from a Charles Dickens book,doesn't it?..Years ago ,there was a film made about a Mill here called,"The Crowthers of Bankdam"which is about the Luddite uprising and rebellion at this mill.My dad worked for this company,as
they built a factory in Cumbria,this being the reason we moved to the lake district.I also worked there as a training instructor,for a long time,and then
it also closed,..so that's why I am back to my birthplace,Here endeth the History lesson....have you all fallen asleep yet?

I found your story very interesting. I was lucky to get to grow up in a healthy outdoor world, even tho my parents were smokers and back then they smoked inside. I never took notice of it all..but sure notice it now. I was a smoker for a while myself!

My mother and father moved off the land..after the Plywood mill that dad had been a foreman for many years at shut down he was 57..not a good age to find yourself out of work.

My birthplace was actually on our Washington Pacific Coast at Long Beach Washington..it is no wonder I love salt air and am happy to be here now where I get to breath it all the time. :o)

Isn't it lovely then,Catfinch,that,just as the fairytales always end.."and they lived happily ever after" applies to us both? :o)))

Yes indeed Bloomer... :o)