I thought I’d tell you a little bit about our farm house and home for the next 2 ½ weeks, Crockett House. Despite being only a short distance from a major highway, the house is surrounded by 53 acres of pasture and woodlands and you approach the white weatherboard house via a long driveway. Parts of the two-storey frontier home were built in 1825 and it retains much of its original woodwork, including the staircase and board and batten doors. The rooms are large and airy and the house was renovated in 2008 so it has all of the comforts of a modern home whilst retaining the calm and peace of an older time. From the large screen porch, we can listen to the nearby Armstrong Creek and watch deer and turkey move in and out of the woods – Vaughan has already been out and about on his walks to check out if there racoons and skunks about too! It really is an ideal place for the six of us to base ourselves for the duration of the WEG. Luckily my friend and room-mate at Crockett House, Toni-anne is about the same size as me and was willing to allow me to dive into her wardrobe and wash bag as I was without my suitcase for the first day. She has also taken some amazing photos of our first few days of the trip – you can see them here on the website and on our Facebook album for WEG 2010.
Leaving Crockett House on our first morning, we headed off to historic Harrodsburgh and the nearby Shaker Village via some beautiful Kentucky countryside. Despite nearly veering off the road a couple of times, I’m getting back into the swing of driving on the ‘wrong side’ and we survived our journey unscathed. At the Shaker Village we took a tour on the carriage drawn by two Percheron horses – Bluey and Ivy – and learned all about how this unusual group of people lived and farmed. Then onto Harrodsburgh where pretty much everything was shut (Sunday) except for a Mexican restaurant. Guess what we had for lunch? The countryside is immaculately cared for and there are lovely houses and barns everywhere. Looking in the local paper we are amazed at how cheap land and houses are here compared to Australia – especially as the land seems so good and the houses very well maintained.
As we cook most evenings, a trip to a supermarket or local shopping centre is on the cards most days and at the moment most of the shops have a Halloween theme in the veggie area with enormous pumpkins and corn dollies on show. Our accents usually draw some comment – ‘Are you German?’ is one of the strangest we’ve had yet! We’ve been signed up for a discount card at the nearby supermarket so we’re real locals now!
