Rehoboth Farm

Y2K came and went with no problems. We had run into problems, however, with the renting of our farm. We have been landlords and we have been renters and I can tell you that neither of them is very much fun. For various reasons by early 2000 we were looking for new accommodations. Having to leave 40 acres of pastures, woods and barns is not an easy thing to do, especially for our family. Kim was expecting Gabriel and so there was some advantage to moving closer to the city. A builder friend of ours recommended a house that he had recently finished on a golf course in a rural area close to town.

Our gut reaction was to reject it on principle alone. We had just spent 2 and a half years preparing for Y2K, learning the homestead life and practicing being self-sufficient farmers. We had come to reject the lure of affluence and the collection of status symbols. Of course we were also about to be without a place to live, expecting a baby, and the six of us had just spent nine months living in a smelly, dark and leaky, 900 square foot frame house. Walking into a bright and spacious new home and smelling the new carpet, new paint, new everything was a very tempting experience. We moved in immediately.

It didnÂ’t take long to remember why we didnÂ’t like subdivision life. One neighborÂ’s driveway was only 20 feet away, fortunately he was friendly, although he did think we were a pretty curious bunch. Our other neighbor was further from our house, but he proved to be quite a squeaky wheel, and never approved of much that we did, much less of our animals. He was the typical American family; one child, Mom worked, and Dad was an avid golfer. We didnÂ’t have much in common and although we never pressed the point, he usually did in some fashion or another. After a year or so it took a privacy fence at $4000 to resolve the issues. Ah, the good life.

Well you can take the homestead family out of the country, but taking the country out of us proved to be much harder. We saw our arrangements as temporary, although we knew we would live there for at least a couple of years. During that time Mike began reading about hunting dogs, and then he read ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’. For months, wherever he went he had a Bible in one pocket and that book in the other. By this time (early 2002), we had eliminated most of our animals due to our neighbor, but now we felt that he should have his own dog and a family pet. Mike suggested a Redbone Coonhound.

The nearest breeder that had puppies was in North Carolina, so we loaded up the van and set off. As it turned out it was pretty far into North Carolina, about an hour north of Charlotte, up in the foothills of the Appalachians. We met the breeder, Mr. Davis, at a store parking lot and then followed him several miles back into the hills. On a steep wooded slope off of a country road he had about 10 pens full of barking hound-dogs. All of them had deep reddish-brown coats and were as healthy as hogs. When they saw Mr. Davis, many of them started baying and howling; long, low and loud. He laughed and said that they thought that he was here to take them hunting, and they were ready to go. We asked if they really liked to hunt, he smiled and said "Can’t you hear ‘em?, it’s what they live for".

He took us to one pen and called into the hutch. A momma dog came prancing out, followed quickly by several little red puppies. The children sat and played with them, while Kim and I talked with Mr. Davis. Dressed in big blue overalls, he looked and talked like a simple country man who loved his dogs, and I guess he was. We found out that he also happened to be an executive officer at the local bank.

We picked out our pup and drove home. Mike decided to call her Virginia Lee after Robert E. Lee. ‘Ginny Lee’ quickly became a part of the family. This was the first hound-dog we had ever owned and certainly the first coon hound. Owning a dog that is bred for scent and speed is a unique experience, especially if you live in a subdivision. We read books on coon hunting and learned about how to train a dog properly. Everything we read was in favor of using real coon-tails for training. The next time we saw a dead raccoon on the side of the road Mike begged me to stop and get the tail. I reluctantly agreed and got out with a pocket-knife in one hand and a plastic bag in the other. What I thought was going to be a quick snip turned out to be major surgery. I struggled to get the tail off while cars were passing by at 60mph. After much tugging and cutting and gagging I got the tail into the bag and we continued on home.

Once home, Mike took over and tied one end of the tail to a long piece of string. He had the rest of us hold Ginny Lee and cover her eyes while he dragged the tail in a maze pattern across the back yard. He finally stopped next to a tree, where he tied the tail up to the first branch, about 6 feet off the ground. We then turned her loose. Mike called her and she started running across the yard. About half-way across it looked like she ran into an invisible wall; she stopped cold and immediately put her nose to the ground. Barking and howling she perfectly followed the trail that Mike had left, she was running faster and faster. The faster she ran the more she barked until she finally came to the tree. She stopped and ran around the tree several times barking and howling, and then finally stopped and stood, barking up into the tree. Mike was as proud as a peacock, and he and his sisters played this game with Ginny several more times before finally giving her the tail. By morning it was just a little white nub.

This changed our way of looking at road-kill. When normal people see road-kill they squint up their nose and say ugh, but we have never been normal. Now whenever we were out and saw a dead animal on the side of the road, the children would rise up in their seats and say, Is it? Is it? Yes! ItÂ’s a raccoon! Stop! Stop! I would have to pull over and separate the coon from his striped attachment, and I actually got pretty good at it. Ginny got pretty good at scenting too, and would anticipate where the trail was going and skip ahead to save time. She could now find the tail in seconds instead of minutes. This, however, sparked her instincts and hunting became her life, golf-course or not. Surrounding our neighborhood were the greens of the course and surrounding those were hundreds of acres of nothing but woods. Each night she would jump the fence in the back of the yard, where it was short, and take off into the darkness. For hours you could hear her barking and howling at a distance as she followed the scent of deer, coons and any other nocturnal creatures.

She would even go hunting in the daytime sometimes, and I could just imagine some golfer about to hit his ball when a red-streak would come flying out of the woods, nose to the ground, and howling, there she would cut straight across the green and into the woods on the other side before he could figure out what was going on. Mike wanted to take her hunting and I made the mistake of agreeing one night. We put a long leash on her and let her go. We were dragged through about a quarter of a mile of brambles and bushes at top speed before we gave up and let her go. As we walked back to the house huffing and puffing we could hear her voice trailing off into the night.

Taking her for walks was a special treat; we would follow the golf cart trails through the woods after the course had closed for the evening. She would start out by our side until the first scent trail came along and then she was off. Every once in a while she would come tearing past us, with what looked like a grin on her face, and then disappear back into the bushes. It was if she was just coming by to check on us before going back to play.

Mike always worried when she would leave, for fear that she wouldnÂ’t come back. Trying to go find her was nearly impossible, although we tried. Then one day we found the one thing that she was afraid of; thunderstorms. We had to go into town for the whole day once and so we wanted to pen her up while we were gone. Unfortunately she bolted out of the yard and went hunting just as we were about to leave. For nearly an hour we drove around calling her. Just then, thunder started rumbling and soon lightning was flashing around us. One of the children said "There she is!", and a red streak came flying out of the woods and made a bee-line for the house. Coming home we found her cowering on the back porch, where Mike quickly penned her up. From then on whenever a storm came up, if she was hunting, she would always come straight home immediately.

Once she showed up at the house with a small creature in her mouth. She dropped it at our feet and just stood there, looking up at us. We could tell that it was a baby rabbit. A few minutes later she returned with another one, her mouth was trembling as she tried not to bite down on it and hurt it. Again she plopped it down and stood there. Mike asked her to show him where she was getting them from and she turned around and took off, barking. We chased along behind her and she kept looking back to see if we were still with her. She took us straight to a small hole, not far from the road. The mother rabbit had either left or been hit by a car and the ants were starting to get to the babies. We took care of the living ones for a few days but were unable to bring any of them through. Each day the children would show Ginny the babies and she would whine and sniff them, like a concerned mother.

If you donÂ’t own a dog and are considering getting one, or if you live in a rural area and want a great companion, get a hound dog. They are great watch-dogs as well as hunters and are about as loyal as any dog we have ever had. If you have a son who is looking for his first dog and true companion, get him a Redbone Coonhound, especially if you have acreage where the two of them can hunt together as friends. You will never regret the investment.