SETTING UP THE FARM

John, leaning against the water tank, his Great Uncle Carmen (right) and his son Jesus, helping to put up the water tank. 


  My mother owned a 20 acre ranch north of Dilley and she told my Grandfather that he could do whatever he wanted to with the land.  She had bought it as an investment.  So that was great for my Grandfather because he loved gardening. 

When we went to see it, he looked at the windmill.  He said, “It’s locked, it has a handle and a wire that you lock it.”  So he put the wire down and lifted the handle.  The wheel started turning and there was a pipe coming out.  It took a little bit and then there was water coming out.  He says, “Oh, we’ve got water.”  He’s said, “That’s good the well is full of water.  Let’s shut it down because the water is just spilling out.”  
  

Later, he bought a metal tank to store the water.  When he was going to put up the tank, we took Carmen, my Grandfather’s younger brother, and Carmen’s son, Jesus, to help.  They laid railroad ties like this and some across like this to build a base.  And then they lifted the tank on top.  It had a faucet and it had an opening on top with a lid.  You’d put the pipe into it and the water would go right in the tank.   

He said, ‘to get drinking water it’s better to get it from the pipe, don’t get it from the tank.  The tank was pretty clean but it was better from the pipe.”  He filled the tank and we spread the water all over and we filled it up again.  He did that several times to clean it out.  Then we had water and the windmill. 

He said, “The next thing I’m going to do is build a garage, a double garage because we need to buy a tractor.  We could get a John Deere tractor.  He said, they also have Ford and they have Farmall, a red tractor.  They’re all good tractors.”  I said, “No, the John Deere tractor, the green ones are real nice.”  He said, “Okay, I’m going to get a John Deere tractor.”  So one side of the garage was for the pickup truck and the other side for the tractor.  The garage was sort of like the one in Encinal at the house.  It was a garage/barn.   

Then he put a little lean-to on the side but he didn’t put a roof on it. He laid bricks for a brick wall.  And that was a kitchen.  This is where we can do the cooking.  Then he had a big barrel and it was cut open with a little grill on the top and my grandmother used it to make tortillas and coffee.  She would cook right there. 

But finally he got to planting corn.  Over the years he planted watermelons, cantaloupe and cotton.  We would fill up the pickup truck with cotton, he put those boards on the side of the truck to extend it up and we’d take it to the cotton gin in Dilley.  They would weigh the truck with the cotton and then we’d go to the other side and they would suck out the cotton with a big vacuum.  Then they weighed the truck again.  Whatever the difference was the weight of the cotton and that is how he got paid for the cotton.   

Same thing with the watermelons.  He would load up watermelons, we’d take them to another place.  They would weigh the truck, unload the watermelons, and weigh it again. They would pay so much per pound for the watermelons.