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Penney Hill Farm, Bridgewater, NS (2026)

10/23/2026

It may look like a wedding dress but it is not. This is a picture of Grampie Penney’s first cousin, Arleen Hollis. Grampie Penney’s mother Lois and Arleen’s mother, Tessie, were sisters who were two of the fifteen children born to Joseph Freeman Morton (known as Freeman) and Hannah Lavenia Hawkesworth-Morton of Watford. Grammy Lois was the eleventh child and Aunt Tessie was lucky number thirteen. There were five boys and ten girls in that family. Graduation from high school was a very big deal, an honour earned, not given. This may even have been a higher level graduation. The cousins out west will know. The picture is undated but thank heavens a name was written in the back.

At graduations in the past, girls wore white dresses. It was a tradition but there were also practical reasons. When women were finally allowed to attend colleges and universities in the late 19th and 20th centuries, it was decided that the women would wear white. Like a wedding dress, white represented a fresh start, new beginnings, and that age old word strapped on women, “purity”. There were also practical reasons for the decision to wear white. If a woman was graduating from a university in cap and gown, the old gowns were sometimes made of thin material. Bright colours would have shown through and “ruined the aesthetic” of the pictures. Everyone wearing white was also a show of unity, meaning that the focus remained on a group achievement and not an individual’s. White was also a blank slate to show off colorful honour cords, sashes, and stoles. Lastly, white was a practical choice as it is a cool colour that reflects sunlight, unlike black that absorbs the heat, helpful during hot late spring and summer graduations. The girls wore white.

Arleen is wearing a wide waistband dress, fitting snugly below the bosom around her midsection like a cummerbund (a word taken from Hindi “kamarband” that means loin band which came from Persian “kamar” = waist + “band” something that ties) on a tuxedo. The dress is long sleeved with a wide wrist band to show off the puffy sleeves. The dress itself is maxi length, long and lovely. The bosom of the dress is full of tucks and pleats, using up lots of material. The neckline is u-shaped and a lovely necklace or locket can clearly be seen. In her right hand she is holding a book of some type.

As lovely as the dress actually is, it is the smile of joy and pride on Arleen’s face that draws the eyes. Her hair is cut short and is thick with curls. She is wearing eyeglasses to improve her vision. Put everything together and one has a picture of a beautiful, young, accomplished woman proudly marking her graduation. That smile lights up her face with a glow that can still be seen many, many decades later. There is always pride when one works hard for an accomplishment. When something is handed to someone on a platter (Dare I say much like the education system today?) too much is taken for granted. To quote Grammie and Grampie Penney, “Hard work never killed anyone.” That is not necessarily totally true but the sentiment can be understood. It is how earlier generations were raised, knowing one had to work for what one wanted. Clearly, Arleen Hollis had done just that as we see her in her graduation dress.

10/22/2026

Something has definitely been brewing over the past three days. All the sky signs point towards “weather” coming our way. Monday there was the ring around the sun for most of the afternoon. Tuesday, there was a faint ring around the sun, off and on. Yesterday, the sky was far more clear, another sign of pending weather. Yesterday was a gorgeous October day, occasionally referred to as a “weather breeder”. The sky was sending more signs of pending weather. There were sun dogs in the sky to the right and left of the sun in the afternoon. Those mini-rainbows are created by ice crystals high in the atmosphere. Rain or snow is on its way. However, the true sign of rain being on its way was the mackerel sky.

Grampa Edwin and Grampie Penney taught all who would listen that a mackerel sky meant that rain is on its way in less than a day. When there were no weather forecasts appearing hourly on a cell phone, this was important information, especially when one was considering cutting down hay with a scythe to dry. What is a mackerel sky? Why isn’t it a trout, herring, or salmon sky? For whatever reason, the fish chosen was a mackerel, a common ocean fish that was a regular part of the Lunenburg County diet, perhaps because smoked or dried mackerel was readily available, even as far inland as we live. Perhaps it was a mackerel sky because of the colour of the clouds matching the colour of a mackerel. We digress. It is called a mackerel sky because the clouds look like the scales on a fish.

The ancestors were great observers of nature. The mackerel sky is a sign of pending weather, usually within 6 to 24 hours. That has been proven to be scientifically correct. Those fish scales in the sky are actually middle to high level cirrocumulus and altocumulus clouds that are a warning sign of a warm front, low pressure system moving in that will bring moisture. It is wind shear that makes the mackerel scales in the sky. Wind shear is a sudden change in the speed or direction of the wind over a short distance. That makes sense that the wind as it changes direction is “breaking” up the clouds and forming them into fish scales.

Grampa Edwin used to recite: “Mackerel sky, not 24 hours dry.” Well, his knowledge has certainly been proven to be accurate. A ring around the sun, sun dogs, and a mackerel sky have indicated that rain was on the way. Rain has arrived, and, in less than 24 hours since the mackerel sky. The ring around the sun means rain or snow within three days. The sun dogs mean rain is on the way. Watching the sky has its advantages, and not just for the beauty of colours, the shapes of clouds, and gorgeous sunsets too. It can also help one be their own weather forecaster, even though the red sunset last night might have lied. Oh well, we knew rain was on the way. Most of the signs pointed that out to us. The mackerel sky was too obvious.

10/20/2026

Grampa Edwin had a prodigious memory. How we regret not having written down more of his knowledge. He grew up and lived at a time when keeping memories was done through an oral tradition. Facts were not always written down because paper was rare and precious. Each generation told the next generation stories and taught lessons on how to live. How to tell the weather from the sky was one of the many ways he passed on his knowledge to his daughter, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, all of whom he adored. He may have spoiled his grandchildren and grandchildren with peppermints and other treats but he did not spoil them through allowing bad behaviour. That was most definitely not acceptable. One of the sixth generation remembers well when the eldest of the seventh generation was not being a good listener. Grampa Edwin was sitting on his chair out in the yard. His simple statement has never been forgotten. “If you cannot make him listen when he is four, you can forget it when he is fourteen.” We took that advice seriously and that four year old appears to have turned out to be okay, a contributing member of society, making the world a better place (to say the least). The other thing he taught was how to watch the sky for clues as to what weather was headed our way. Grammie Penney had been taught these things, as was Grampie Penney by the people around him growing up. Yesterday’s sky was sending mixed messages.

While tying up severed sunflower heads to dry for seed saving, Nikita’s human was sitting on a lawn chair cleaning off the thousands of tiny yellow flowers to reveal the seeds underneath, tying the stems in bundles, and then hanging them upside down in the barn. The she-shack beams are already full. Work like this is pleasurable, leaving the mind and eyes free to wander. The maple and ash trees down by the house were full of red-winged blackbirds. We have never seen so many of them together. There were at least fifty to sixty of them. They must be gathering together for their migration south. Looking at the tree caused Nikita’s human to see a ring around the sun, a sure sign of a pending storm within three days, according to Grampa Edwin, Grammie Penney, and Grampie Penney. That solar halo lasted for hours. Finishing the task at hand and putting away work items, Nikita’s human figured there would be a day off outside work tomorrow (which is today). That was faulty thinking.

Finishing cutting off sunflower heads as the sun sank below the horizon, there was quite a sunset that went on and on. The first photo was taken from within the south vineyard at 6:18 p.m, (yes, the daylight hours to work in the evening are shrinking rapidly) capturing the sun as it dropped below the hill. The last picture was taken at 7:07 p.m., well after dark. Lauralee and her sister would have scored this sunset as a solid 9 out of 10 but not because of a fantastic blend of colours. Last night’s sunset had staying power. It also spread all around the sky, bathing the home of the seventh and eighth generation in pink. For those two reasons, it was a 9 out of 10 on the Lauralee and sister sunset scale. Everyone knows a red sky at night is a sailor’s delight (or a shepherd’s or a farmer’s, etc.). A ring around the sun followed by a glorious sunset is definitely a mixed message but then no form of forecasting the weather is perfect.

P.S. The portrait photo is undated but is of a young and handsome Edwin Fancy, who taught his family so much, his thick hair (that he had until the day he died) in waves over his forehead. No wonder Grammy Gladys fell in love with him.

P.P.S. The sunset photos are in sequential order but also face in all the cardinal directions, the colours filling the sky and the reason for the 9 out of 10. That was no fleeting moment sunset.

10/19/2026

This advertisement is from The South Shore Record published on Wednesday, February 11th, 1959. The Capitol Movie Theatre was the theatre that one summer’s evening in the late 1960’s , the third child of the sixth generation got to have a whole evening with her Daddy entirely to herself. In a family of four, a child having a father to themselves was a rare enough occurrence to stick solidly in the memory. The movie was about a grizzly bear and was about Alaska, a place Grampie Penney always wanted to go. We got him and Grammie Penney to the Rocky Mountains in Canada during the summer of their 50th Wedding Anniversary. We saw all sorts of animals but he wanted to see a grizzly. The rest of us were just as happy to not come across one. The other event that made that night out with a Daddy was the heat lightning storm taking place toward the north during the entire drive home from Lunenburg. In Cornwall, the lightning was spectacular. Having been taught to be afraid of thunder and lightning storms (we had to get dressed and come downstairs if there was a storm at night), Grampie Penney assured his daughter that this light show was perfectly safe as it was just sheet lightning. That movie and that light show are embedded in a memory.

The advertisement reads:
“CAPITOL
LUNENBURG
______________
Wednesday and Thursday
February 11th and 12th
HARRY BLACK & THE TIGER
Stewart Barbara
Granger Rush
_______________
Friday and Saturday
February 13th and 14th
DEERSLAYER
Lex Rita
Barker Moreno
________________
Monday and Tuesday
February 16th and 17th
CHASE A CROOKED
SHADOW
Anne Richard
Baxter Todd”

There was a movie theatre in Lunenburg and the Avon Theatre in Bridgewater. At one point there were two drive-in theatres, The Birch Pond Drive-In Theatre in Stanley Section, and the Skyview Drive-In Theatre in West Northfield. Now the nearest movie theatres are in Halifax or the Valley. Watching a movie on a big screen is pretty much a thing of the past for most people locally. Some people will remember the Capitol Theatre in Lunenburg and some will remember the Avon Theatre in Bridgewater. More probably remember the wonder of seeing a movie at one of the local drive-ins with hamburgers, hotdogs, French fries, and snacks a possibility, if one was lucky. There may or may not have been snacks bought the night Gilbert Penney took his third child to a movie in Lunenburg but that child certainly felt lucky.

10/18/2026

Grampie Penney loved splitting firewood. Working with him on his wood splitter was always an education. So schooled was he in the way of trees that he could pick up any piece of wood and identify the species by the bark. This is a red oak. This is a swamp maple. This is a yellow birch (that one we always knew by its yellow birchbark). This is beech (that one we always knew by its gnarled wood that was, and still is, heavy to lift). He knew them all. His first job was “working in the woods” which meant going into the woods camps and staying in those camps with the men. He was a young boy when he finished school in grade eight (that grade eight education back then probably could not be topped by a grade twelve education today). He went into the woods to earn cash money, a rare commodity in a farming community. In fact, historically, in primary documents like diaries and Minutes from meetings, Upper Northfield was referred to as a village. After all, historically, it always had at least one store, two churches, a school, and several gas stations. Working in the woods he was put to work loading and unloading wood from the sleighs and wagons, usually hauled by horses. It was hard work and sleeping in the wood camps, he learned many life lessons. It took his family a long time to break him of the habit of not talking at mealtimes. In the wood camps, the cook ruled with a wooden spoon in the cook house and dining hall. The men learned to not bite the hand that fed them. Silence was the rule for mealtimes unless one was asking to have something passed, like “Would someone please pass the biscuits.” Grampie Penney from boyhood had been taught to be silent at mealtimes.

Most importantly, little Gilbert learned how to get along with other people. The older men tolerated the “young fellas”, remembering they were that age too once upon a time, but that had its limits. One case in point was little Gilbert and his musical instruments he took with him to play in the camp house. Musicians sometimes took their fiddles or guitars into the camps for Saturday night entertainment. Sunday was the day of rest and no work occurred that day except for the cook and their assistant(s). Music on Saturday night was enjoyed, as well as a game or two of cards. A deck of cards easily fit into a pocket when walking into and out of the woods camps because walking was how most of the men got there. Little Gilbert’s musical instruments fit into his pocket. One was a mouth organ or what others call a harmonica. He played his harmonica most of his life, especially enjoying playing for a granddaughter who loved to dance to his homemade tunes. The second instrument was not held in as high esteem by some of the older men as his mouth organ.

That was what he always called his Jew’s harp, also called a jaw harp. Historically, It has no connection to the Jewish faith but is believed to have developed somewhere in China or Southern Asia over 4000 years ago. His had a flexible metal tongue inside a solid frame. The frame goes against one's lips. By changing the shape of his mouth or tongue, he could make rhythms, through how he breathed. He loved playing it, especially as a lad. Some of the men at the camp did not love hearing it. In fact, some of them hated it and ordered him to stop. Being the youngest boy in a family of eleven, their threats did not really put the fear of God into him. He was used to getting away with things. Eventually he told his children, his jaw harp disappeared one day. No one would ever admit to its theft but someone did tell him if he wanted it back, it was at the bottom of the outhouse. He did not take another jaw harp into the camps. He learned to get along with the bigger and stronger older men at a young age.

This picture was taken in Watford, probably around 1994 or 1995. (We know. The person who should do better did not put the date on the picture.). Grampie Penney was wearing gloves for handling wood, a ball camp, a white T-shirt with an ever-present sleeveless white undershirt beneath, work pants, and his weight belt around his waist to help his back stay strong. His granddaughter is his helper, “throwing off”. That meant she kept her hands well away from the wood splitter, gathering up the split pieces after it passed through the iron splitter, the wood pushed by a hydraulic system. She is wearing a hat with a chin strap to keep the sun off her fair skin, an oversized light grey t-shirt, shorts, socks, and sneakers. Surprisingly, her grandfather did not send her back into the house to put on long pants. She was a grandchild. She got away with things. Grampie Penney is wearing safety goggles, focused on the task at hand. His granddaughter is grinning at the photographer, just happy to work with a grandfather who made every chore not a chore. He made everything fun to do, perhaps because he enjoyed most tasks that he decided to do.

10/17/2026

It is not just cowboys that wear chaps. These are Grampa Edwin Fancy’s chaps from his years as a blacksmith. They are made of a heavy leather that once upon a time was pliable and form fitting to protect all the important bits. Those chaps are quite dried out now but a good dousing in water might make them flexible once again. Grampa Edwin was not just a blacksmith, making tools and repairing wheels; he was also a farrier. A farrier puts shoes on horses and in oxen. In English, farrier has meant someone who shoes horses since the 1560’s. It came from the French word “ferrier” that means blacksmith which came from the Latin word “ferrarius” that means blacksmith with the root word being “ferrum” that in Latin means iron.

Grampa Edwin had a blacksmith shop conveniently located down by the road when people brought horses to him to be shod. Oxen always were brought to him to be shod. They were walked into a stall and then a sling was put underneath them to lift them up. A series of pulleys took the manual lifting away from the human. A typical working oxen would weigh from 730 to 1000 kilograms. That is a serious weight to lift up. One of his granddaughters distinctly remembers going down to the blacksmith shop to watch him work. The forge would be hot with the special high heat coal he would purchase. There was always a bucket of water to dunk whatever metal item was being pounded into shape. Grampa Edwin’s huge hands he had genetically were matched by huge string forearms from his daily work. He would have on his leather chaps as protection and always wore long sleeves. The memory of huge working horses stomping into the blacksmith shop through the two barn door width doors is as clear as a bell. Horses sensed his gentle nature and never kicked him. He had a way about him, a gentle giant of a man for his time. The average height of a man in Canada in 1900 (Grampa Edwin was born in 1899) was five foot seven. Grampa Edwin was well over six feet tall. The Fancy’s, male or female, were not small people. Animals trusted him. People did too as he was as honest as the day was long.

When Grampa Edwin was asked by a nosey grandchild if he and Grammy Gladys ever fought, he replied, “A cross word never passed between us.” He meant it, but then he was an easy going man, more than content with his lot in life. We can think of a time when a cross word would have passed between us. A further comment was made about how in all her baby and young little girl pictures, little Miss Noreen (the future Grammie Penney) was always dressed in white. Apparently it was easier to bleach clothes clean if they were white. As she often did, little Miss Noreen went down to the blacksmith shop to be with her “Daddy” (how she always referred to her father). What did the farrier/blacksmith let her do? Apparently, she was having the time of her life playing with the coal bucket over in a corner, making piles of coal and building with her imagination. A friendly reminder that this little girl was wearing a white dress and white socks. When dry, coal dust is not very sticky and will brush away easily but if one introduces moisture to coal dust, it can stick like glue. We are trying to picture the scene of one dirty little girl arriving up to the Durland farmhouse covered in coal dust. Grammy Gladys must have had a great deal of restraint if there were no cross words said. However, she was a good Baptist, never took the Lord’s name in vain, and was content with her lot in life as well. Little Miss Noreen was raised as an only child (her older sister was stillborn) by parents who adored her and could not do too much that would have been considered wrong. Clearly, that was also true of her husband not doing too much wrong either.

The chaps were worn throughout his lifetime. They are patched in two places. One can only imagine the strength of the needle to punch through that tough leather. Sewing those two patches on would have required a great deal of hand strength. There is no doubt that Grampa Edwin had plenty of that to go around. These chaps were worn by Grampa Edwin who was a blacksmith/farrier, not a cowboy.

10/16/2026

Yesterday morning the sky sent out a rainbow. This morning the sky coloured up for the sunrise. Everyone knows what that means. If you have work to do outside, to use a local phrase, “Better get at ‘er!” Nikita’s human had to wear a toque and mittens this morning. Okay, that human did not HAVE to but it was far more comfortable walking on the frosty, crunchy ground. Blueberries snitched off the bush (Yup, there are still some there.), were slightly frozen. There will not be too many more mornings where a handful of blueberries will be a pre-breakfast snack. As beautiful as the forests are now, the sky also has its own beauty, especially when sunrises and sunsets decide to bend light into colours of the spectrum we do not always see like it did this morning. Even the layered and rippled clouds rolling in showed off intricate patterns. It is hard to believe that H2O molecules can make such fascinating patterns. What a wonderful world!

10/15/2026

Listening to an inner voice, at the last moment Nikita’s human went back into the farmhouse and grabbed a photo taking device. Being a human not emotionally attached to a cell phone, this was an unusual action to take. It proved to be a smart move listening to that inner voice. According to research, not everyone has an inner voice, an internal monologue which is actually a stream of verbal thoughts running through a person’s mind. It is like talking to oneself silently. Some people talk to themselves aloud (often maddening for the people around them). Grampa Edwin used to do this sometimes, perhaps a habit formed working in his blacksmith shop alone. When told he was talking to himself, he had an excellent reply: “Sometimes that is the only intelligent person I can talk to.” People who have an inner voice think in words. Other people think in images, mathematical patterns, wordless intuition, or even spatial concepts. Many of us never stop to think about how we think, taking for granted the inner workings of our brains. Many of us have amazing conversations with ourselves in our mind. However one thinks, Nikita’s human made a last moment decision to grab a cell phone. That was lucky intuition.

Walking in the usual direction counter-clockwise around the fence (Nikita gets upset when that order is reversed. Dogs, like humans, are also creatures of habit.), her human made the turn and glanced at the sunflowers that are now tall seed heads bent with the weight of their seeds blowing in the wind. That was when a bright piece of a rainbow was spotted next to the she-shack in the north, like all rainbows opposite the sun. The whole sequence lasted from 8:31 at first notice to being faded away by 8:41. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time.

There is something so magical about the optical illusion that is a rainbow. Pictures were taken of the fragment to the north when Nikita’s human turned to see if there was “another side” to the rainbow. At first there was not but then the western side also formed. Standing in rain stinging the face (it was worth it), the entire rainbow formed and then, magic on magic, a second arch began to appear on the northerly side of the rainbow. A sense of awe and happiness were the emotions a brain was dealing with. Rainbows never cease to amaze with their colourful beauty seen today with photo evidence only because Nikita’s human followed what is often called intuition.

10/14/2026

The tractor in this picture caused quite a row (rhymes with cow as in argument, not as in “row, row your boat”) between Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Penney (the future Grammie and Grampie Penney) in 1956 when they had two small children, a girl and a boy. That is not Grampie Penney sitting on the tractor as much as he would come to look like his oldest brother. That was Uncle Wilfrid who must have been home for a visit from Massachusetts. Uncle Wilfrid is sitting jauntily on the tractor that caused one of the major disputes of a farming couple’s married lives. Grammie Penney was very, very angry and we do not blame her one iota (a word taken from the Greek alphabet referring to the ninth and smallest letter in that language that corresponds to the letter “i” in Latin. In classical Greek iota referred to anything very small. Iota comes Semitic, a language family that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic spoken in Ethiopia, Tigrinya spoken in Eritrea, as well as other ancient languages like Phoenician and Akkadian.).

The picture was taken between the barn and the carriage house which is the building that can be seen in the background with an apple tree to the right of the building. Why was it called the carriage house? It held the carriage with two large doors that opened outward so that the horse carriage could be stored inside out of the weather. The horse carriage, until motor vehicles, was the principal means of transport and was well cared for. Uncle Wilfrid is wearing a warm sweater. With the lack of leaves on the tree, the picture was taken either in the spring or fall. The sweater had a Nordic pattern knitted in around the upper body and upper sleeves. Truly, he is dressed as a gentleman farmer in dress pants, dress shoes, the handsome sweater, and a fedora cap tipped jauntily on his head. It is quite eerie how much he looks like Grampie Penney.

Why did a simple tractor cause such a row? Well, wait until you hear this story. Unbeknownst to his lady wife Noreen, Gilbert Penney negotiated with his neighbour and friend, Lincoln Lohnes, the co-owner and operator of Lohnes & Zwicker Massey Ferguson dealership who sold farm vehicles as a business when he returned from WWII as a wounded war hero, to buy a tractor. As a farmer in the 1950’s cash money was hard to come by. However, his wife Noreen was a trained bookkeeper who knew how to keep a budget, dutifully setting money aside every year so that they could take a vacation. You might see where this story is going now. Without telling his wife, young and naive Gilbert thought it would be okay to take their vacation money and use it as a downpayment for a tractor. What he failed to understand was that this was something that should have been discussed between the two of them beforehand. Grammie Penney worried about how they were going to make payments. Grampie Penney said it would not be a problem. (However, it was. At one point, he borrowed money from one bank in Bridgewater to make the payment at the other bank, robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. Eventually, the tractor was paid for and put to good use on the farm.) Mr. Gilbert had decided to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

When he drove up the lane with his new tractor, proud as Punch (the hook-nosed anti-hero in the Punch & Judy puppet shows), he did not realize that his farming wife was ready to give him a punch. The feud that followed is legendary in the family with each person involved, Mrs. Noreen and Mr. Gilbert, each giving their own side of the story over time. As in all stories, somewhere in the middle is the truth. Grammie Penney was slow to boil but once there, her anger was EPIC! The same could be said for Grampie Penney. He stood his ground in the absolute belief that this new technology of owning a tractor on a farm was the way of the future. She stood her ground that they needed to go and visit family to get away from the farm for a while. This picture is the evidence of who wore down the other, eventually, in this marital feud. There sits Uncle Wilfrid sitting proudly at the wheel of his baby brother’s tractor, bought to replace horses and oxen in 1956, the tractor that could have caused a divorce.

10/13/2026

Getting a workout over Thanksgiving, these two carving knives have been in this old farmhouse for as long as anyone of the sixth generation can remember. We strongly suspect these were made by one of the ancestors, combining the handiwork of a blacksmith with the wood skills of another or even the same person who put the knife together. Grampie Penney tended to prefer the brown handled knife, sharpening it on the steel knife honing rod that also may be rather old. It too has a wooden handle. It is definitely not plastic. The knife sharpener has a round metal circle so it can be hung up for easy access to keep a knife sharp. That honing rod is comfortably curved, shaped to fit into a hand easily.

As odd as it sounds, one is more likely to cut oneself on a dull knife than a sharp knife. Chefs take meticulous care of their knives and keep them honed daily or maybe even twice a day. That process takes off tiny burrs on the edge of the knife. Honing a knife does not grind away metal. Grampie Penney made that mistake, to the horror of Grammie Penney. He put her good Grohmann paring knives on the grinder to sharpen them. Oops, that was a mistake. Evidence can be seen in the picture of the two paring knives. He should have used the honing rod like he did with his “ancestral” carving knives. Clearly, he did not learn from the first one and went on to do a real job on nicking the metal on the second.

That is not the end of stories of the good paring knife (ask anyone who cooks regularly how important a good sharp paring knife is every day) being ill used. Someone still living here in the old farmhouse may or may not have used a good Grohmann paring knife as a screwdriver. THAT was not a good choice. In fact, a paring knife used as a screwdriver is not a good idea at all. The tip was snapped off, making the paring knife quite useless for digging in to clear out spots on potatoes and apples. Paring knives are not screwdrivers, end of story.

We have absolutely no idea how old those two original carving knives might be. They appear to have handles that were hand made, especially the brown handled knife. Wherever they came from, they are still put to good use, not sharpened on the grinder, but on the honing rod. They are also not used as screwdrivers. Heaven only knows there are plenty of screwdrivers around here to use without resorting to a “handy dandy” innocent paring knife that just happens to be there. Thanksgiving gave the carving knives a workout with more uses in the future. All too rapidly, Christmas is coming when the knives will get another workout.

Penney Hill Farm

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