(Photograph copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
Old tobacco barn on our farm in Grays Chapel, North Carolina.
Grandpa’s Tobacco Barn
Category: Family
A Fair Trade
My wife Dedra was checking the henhouse for eggs this afternoon and found a visitor. He already had a couple of eggs in his belly, but we don’t really mind too much. She put him down in the barn to catch mice after he finishes his digestion. Seems like a fair trade, a couple of eggs now and then for some rodent control. He’s a black rat snake, a constrictor, non poisonous, and it looks like he just shed. There’s a bit of dry skin still attached near his eye.
(Photographs copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
Shadow
(Photograph copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
Our cat Shadow reposes among the Creeping Jenny in our yard in Grays Chapel, North Carolina.
Donna’s Rose
(Photograph copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
The old fashioned climbing rose is early and full this year in my back yard in Grays Chapel, North Carolina. My parents always called it “Donna’s Rose” because it bloomed around my late sister’s birthday.
Happy 90th
(Photograph copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
Just back from the celebration. Happy 90th to my cousin and neighbor Thomas Routh.
Keys to My Grandpa’s House
(Photograph copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
Still-life of old keys.
Old Horse Plows
(Photograph copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
Old horse plows in my Grandpa’s barn.
A Pile of Stones
If you walk around in the woods in Grays Chapel, North Carolina, especially in the winter, it’s amazing how much evidence of the history of the area you can see. These images are of an old stone dam on Bush Creek some 300 feet long and 20 feet in height. A lot of the stonework is intact but the center of the dam was breached by a long ago hurricane and the creek now flows freely through. For some people, it probably just looks like a pile of rocks, but the rock work is beautiful and it is very special and significant to me on a personal level. My great-great-grandfather Isaac Routh built this dam in the late nineteenth century and it held back a five acre pond which powered a grist mill. Isaac and his son Wes ran that mill until it burned in the 1940’s (replaced by a nearby engine powered mill) and the pond remained until a hurricane caused a breach in the 1950’s. Wes’s brother, my great-grandfather John T. Routh, learned his profession as a miller here before he moved on to his own mill business in Bonlee in Chatham County.
(Photographs copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
Cousin Tommy
Cousin Tommy Routh feeding and checking on his stock down the road from me in Grays Chapel, North Carolina. He boards horses on his “Routh Ranch”.
(Photographs copyright 2012 by Dan Routh)
World Traveler
(Photograph copyright 2011 by Dan Routh)
Among the family visitors we had over the holidays was Brown Teddy, my son Devin’s childhood companion. Teddy has been living in New Hampshire the last couple of years with Devin and recently had the opportunity to be the traveling companion of Dartmouth student Jocelyn Powelson on a trip to China, where the globe-hopping bear had a chance to view the Great Wall and take a ride on a camel in the Gobi Desert. After the New Year, his adventures continue. Next stop, New Zealand, and a chance to view the Southern Cross.
(Photographs courtesy Jocelyn Powelson)
Dan Routh Photography 