October24, 2011. Artemas, PA. Bill.

I could hear a machine and thought it was coming from the main farm house.   "It is the last grass cutting for the year", I said to myself.    I was right.   Bill soon stopped by our Hill House to let us know what we owed him for his efforts this whole season.     In country style, he will never want you to pay him a deposit, even though he knows we will be gone all summer.  He prefers to have us pay him at the end of the season.  He has a small book in his pocket saying how many times the grass has been cut this year and thus, what we owe him.    From his little book, he can tell us whether it was a wet or a dry year, depending in the number of times he cut the grass.  This year, he said was inexpensive for us.  We were just grateful of his attention to our place.

Years ago, in 1973, Bill Taylor installed the drywall in our old farm house.  We met his wife Shirley, who acted as his bookkeeper with his drywall business.  In addition, in 1969, he bought  an old farm and renovated the turn of the century house, and moved into and lived there until he sold it to a young couple,  who a year later split and stopped paying their mortgage to Bill.    Bill bought the farm back at a sale, and we bought the farm from Bill, so Bill has been looking after this farm for a long time.

Bill has had nine lives.  Three times, he was run over by his tractor, but survived.  He has had three heart operations and until ten years ago, he was a heavy smoker.  Now he can not cut our grass anymore due to shortness of breath.  But he will continue to look over this property for which we are very grateful.  He is a good solid citizen, just made in a different mould.