Flowing Water Farm

Cherry Hollow Farm, Stacy Nash

Kit released at Nashville Needlework Market 2015

36 count Weeks Dye Works Beige

Weeks Fibers

In 1949 Grandmother Bessie and her family moved to a 250 acre farm which Grandfather Isaac named Flowing Water.  Having water on a farm is vital to livestock and crops thriving.  Depending on the season, the creek on the farm ranged anywhere from being wide enough to jump or overflowing its banks and flooding.  Parts of the creek were deep enough for a swimming hole.

When the family moved to the farm, there was an antebellum farmhouse.  Because I was a young child my memories of this house are limited.  Upstairs in Grandmother's farmhouse were iron beds with springs.  Not box springs but real springs.  Jumping on these beds was pure delight.  Jumping on a bed with springs is something like jumping on a trampoline.  My cousins and I had great times jumping on these beds until we caused such a commotion an adult family member would come upstairs to admonish us.

My other memory of the farmhouse is when it burned.  It burned during the night and the next morning, I remember seeing the smoking remains and the stone chimneys which were still standing.  My father had been taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation.  He had run into the burning house to save Great Grandmother Sarah Miranda's trunk which she had used when the family moved from Spring Creek, North Carolina to Emert's Cove, Tennessee.  The trunk contained family photos, papers and memorabilia. 

While a new house was being build for Grandmother Bessie, she lived with us.  It was wonderful!  She was there each morning helping Mother prepare breakfast and she was there each evening to help Mother and her rowdy bunch with homework, laundry, and the thousand other things which a young growing family needed. 

When Grandmother's new house was finished, the neighbors gave her a house warming party:  new dishes, linens, towels, silverware, etc. were generously gifted to my Grandparents.  While seeing Grandmother open these gifts,  I was sad because it meant Grandmother would no longer be living with us and would be moving. 

Grandmother loved her new home.  She was a fastidious housekeeper and her home was always impeccably clean (unlike my own).  The family always gathered at Grandmothers for holiday celebrations.  Sleepovers were common and Grandmother and I would bake, read and work on sewing projects during sleepovers. 

So. . .the next piece of needlework which will be added to the Grandmother Bessie Wall will be Flowing Water Farm 1949.