Smokehouse

 Yesterday I came upon another piece of the past that will help me to reconnect to the future. I found the Ison's Nursery and Vineyard  

catalog my father ordered his grapes on December 11, 1978. At the time my father was nearly at the end of his two year ministry in Lake City from 1977 to June of 1978. This would be his last church, as he formed the Luther R Stokes Evangelistic Association, purchased an old house on St.John's Street and spent more time in Crawfordville, the twenty-acre property he purchased from Mrs Lucille Towles in the late sixties. Typed inside the catalog was the note: Grapes around garden in backyard, starting at smokehouse: Two Dixie, One Pride, One Chief, Two Noble, Two Jumbo, One Southland, Two Sugargate, Three Cowart.  Pictured is the smokehouse, the first out building my father and I built behind the old house. I have the bell on the cross tie in my backyard. I plan on ordering these same grapes from Ison's in Brooks, Georgia  and planting them in my backyard in the same order.