Metal Detecting at old school foundation

Chloe-girl hidden almost by over grown weeds, at the picnic area

There was so much we could have been doing this weekend at the farm. We had started out weed-eating the picnic area and along the creek, but after an hour so in such high humidity we were whupped and back to the house we went for lunch.

Rain Clouds? Alas no...

The clouds had started coming in, rain again or so we thought, a light breeze picked up so after lunch out we went again to pick up where we left off. I didn't make it. The call of doing something something fun like digging for treasures won out.

In the back behind our old farm house stood a school house in the late 1800's, the foundation is still there, how do we know this .well about a year and a half ago we were tearing down an old deer stand shed in the backyard, when much to our surprise the door had writing on it, along with dates, school children's names and a poem or two. After much research and talking with several local historians we found our quaint little farm had once been the home of Highland School. (An newspaper article with a picture of the door was recently written up in the 'Hartsville Vidette' Thursday June 28, 2012 edition  By John  Oliver ). read it here  www.hartvillevidette.com
A local one room school house that had about 10 -15 children, probably all ages.

Our door had its original forged handle and door brackets on it. The writting done in pencil was so old and faint, but the words .."it rained today.. Sept. 30, 1898  were still legible  on it. It now sets in the Hartsville TN, Historical museum for all too see.

Back to detecting. Our backyard behind the farm house is kind of wavy. With rocks jutting out where at one time they had rolling down the hill side and lodged, or they had stacked them up when they built the school; the ground is very uneven and soft in places.. There are still two large rocks which we think were the stepping stones up to the doors and about four foundation stones in and not so square layout. We trip or sit on over these things all the time.

Pops sitting on a step of  the old school house, with Chole girl.

So we decided to lift them up and see if what if anything was under them, ( we also know at one time there was forge/ maybe blacksmith and  or cobbler shop on the premises and two original homestead houses, one that burned near the school house the other we think in the barnyard.)

What did we find?

All our goodies.. so far!

As we lifted up the first we heard a crunch sound, sure enough we had broken a white glass milk lid, but found one more still intact after a little digging.  As we dug in other places we found odd shapes of metal, old door handles, flaking with age and deterioration, a large metal stake of some type, a cobblers shoe form, and couple of old lace up boots, glass jars, various square nails, and a selection of where through the ages this area had been uses as a burn pile area.. artifacts*(aluminum foil, coffee cans, barb wire, broken jars etc.) dating across the ages.
We haven't found  anything yet of real value ( except the door), but haven't given up hope as as our little farm is chalked full of history.  It made for a fun Sunday afternoon.

One last picture of our day, as we were driving back home , this young group of gobblers followed us as ways down the road until their mom came and showed them how to fly to get out of the way of vehicles. They took off shortly in glorious flight right after I shot this picture. It was good to see such a young  healthy group, so many flocks we see are more mature gobblers.
-TNfrmgrl