We’ve added more photographs to the companion website for Tuscawilla: Stories of a Farm, and have a blog post by Kaaren Cary Ford telling of her mother’s welcome to the farm after her marriage in January 1948.
I forgot to mention that as newlyweds my mom and dad, Mary Elizabeth Reaser Cary and George Edward Cary, lived in the cottage behind the brick house. Imagine my mom’s surprise (dismay) when she was carried over the threshold to find a bathtub full of baby Tamworth pigs under a heat lamp. I don’t remember exactly why the pigs were in the bathtub, other than they needed a place to stay extra warm. As you can probably guess baby pigs are very cute, but they make lots of noise, and after a while there is a smell. Then, one night in the middle of the night, mom and dad were awakened by a great noise—cow bells clanging, pots and pans being banged together and people making whooping and hollering noises. All of this racket was because Ralph Warren and others had come to serenade them, an old tradition among the Cary friends. The fun part was when dad was made to push mom up and down the farm lane in a wheelbarrow of frozen manure. Lesser women would have gone home to their parents, but mom stuck it out and thoroughly enjoyed all her years at the farm.