Work / Key / Fire / Neighbors

When I would tell people I met on the road about Rosewater, I often heard, "Farming is a lot of hard work, you know." I was always surprised. Did I seem the kind of guy that was naïvely jumping into a project thinking it was going to be a cakewalk?
Fact is, though, that I don't expect it to be very hard. To me, going to a 9-5 job that I hate, day in and day out, for months and years... That's hard work. Hell, with a job like that, getting out of bed to face the day seems like hard work.
Working twelve-hour days on a factory was tiring work, but I never considered it to be "hard work."

Sure, competing with nature for control of the land is probably hard work. But I do not plan to compete; I intend to work with nature. If I planned on cutting down every sapling that's reclaimed even one field, I would lose my mind. We are talking about over twenty years' worth of wild growth in some fields!

Anyway.

Scott and I spent an afternoon at Rosewater, recently. We were not very productive, but we mostly went since he hadn't seen it in three months. We scoured for a place to set the bridge, and Scott managed to start a good fire after only five seconds' trying. After we tired of the fire, we poked around the old house-site, and discovered some of the bricks in the fireplace were loose. I eventually grabbed the pick-axe to pry out more bricks. In between a couple of them, in the mortar, we found a key! It's labeled by the F. W. Stewart Mfg. Co., Chicago U.S.A. and has the number 173 on one side. Who knows about old keys? Can somebody tell me what it might be to? (After a little googling, we suspect it is a very old car key.)

Today I went out with the solar-powered emergency radio my mom gave me for Christmas. It has an audio-in port, so I was able to enjoy some music while I cleared out the there-for-some-reason hole in the floor.
The hole is part of the cement floor, but is about two or three feet deep, almost five feet wide, and nearly three feet across. Mom imagines it is where milk was once stored. Scott and I wondered if it might make a good fire-pit to heat the house.
It will not. The place filled with smoke quickly, even with a very small fire. To ventilate such a large pit would be more trouble than would be worth it.

The kids from uphill came down to get their dogs (the dogs always run down when they hear me working), and we chatted a bit. They told me they're moving soon, and will be getting rid of their chickens. I told them I might be interested in buying them, and they said they'll probably give them away. I told them I'd talk to them about it once we build a chicken coop.

After they left, I thought about how I would feel if my kids came home talking about the man building a home in the abandoned woods. Once I wrapped up for the day, I walked uphill to introduce myself. Judy, the neighbor, recognized me immediately, even though the last time I saw her was two days after the house burned down in 2003, and  1999 before that.
We talked about the problems in the area. She is sure the house burned down because someone was making meth in it. She also said somebody has been driving around stealing dogs for a while (for rituals, according to the police). So that's good to be aware of.
She has had several surgeries over the past year, so there's a lot that needs doing before they move back to Utah. I told her to let me know if I can help with anything, and she told me to let her know if someone wants to buy 100 acres. (I wish.)