A Visit to Goat Hill Farm, June 2014

Following attending Mercy's graduation ceremony in Austin, Michal and I headed to Goat Hill Farm.  She and her brother inherited the property and an old farm house from their parents.  The farm is just outside Hamilton, Texas.  Her brother has updated the old home and Michal and John selected a site away from the front gate with lovely views for their home.  

If you have never heard of a "dog-run house" I'll try to explain how it is built and why it got that descriptive name.  Think of the house being built around a porch that looks like the letter H on its side and the roof covers all of this - 

The kitchen was away from the rest of the house because that's where the heat was. Because the porch was open the dogs could run through the house - thus the name.  John and Michal made a variation of this.  Their suite is on the same side as the kitchen, thanks to air conditioning, and the guest quarters are on the other side.  They also installed glass "garage doors" that can be lowered to close the dog run and this is where they have their living and dinning rooms.

Here are some photographs of the home:

The view of the house from the main pasture.

Views in the kitchen.

The sitting area in the master suite.

The bedroom area.

This photograph is of the living room in the "dog run" area and the ladder to the grandchildren's loft.

This view of the living room shows the garage door that can be raised to allow the breeze through.

The front door.

Michal on the back porch.

For getting around on the farm, Michal uses a Gator.  The dogs, Colt, Kota, and Rue, love to run but to protect them from blade grass, which can kill a dog, and burrs, she puts them in T-shirts.

Michal in her Gator.

The sign on the dash - seems appropriate for any vehicle.

Michal and her well dressed pack.

Here are some views around the farm.

Note Colt sneaking up on a cow in order to do some herding.  Cow wasn't happy.

Not exactly like the horse barns of northern Virginia (see previous post).

You can see how dry the tank is - the hull of a boat is shown at the top where the water should be.

Tree is estimated to be over 200 years old.

The farm is also going to be the family burial site but so far only one grave is there.  Two years ago their beloved dog, Nickie was killed by a rattle snake.  We visited the grave and found that the cross needed pushing up.

Well, we couldn't stay on the farm too long, even though just sitting and listening to the rain on the tin roof was delightful and enjoying the SILENCE was marvelous, headed out.

Our first stop was in Clifton, TX (yep, there's one in TX and VA) to do a little wine tasting.

We didn't actually visit the winery, but it has a lovely tasting room in Clifton.

Here are a couple of shots from the tasting room:

Next, following a tip from John, we went in search of the perfect chicken fried steak.  This brought us to Hico, TX (that's HI co, TX).  Note the hitching post -it's still used.

The search for the steak lead us to 

Here are some shots in and around the restaurant:

That's mirangue towering over the pie.

Cowboys do not remove their hats inside.

Note that the chicken fried steak is only $9.99.  The waitress took one look at Michal and me and said we'd probably prefer the ½ order.  It was more than enough and we would have been happy to pay the full price.  I chose the onion rings and they were the best I have ever had.

Remember - this is the half order!

Here are some shots of downtown Hico:

This is the local TX-Mex restaurant with a really long bar.

The local popcorn shop and the sign when closed.

Just a friendly reminder.

The local barer shop has a B and B on the 2nd floor.

Across the street from the barber shop we met Denise.  She was TX friendly and invited us in to look around.  Her client was getting a major frosting job but we weren't comfortable taking shots.

If you're really interested in Billy the Kid this is the part of TX to visit.  Seems there is a huge rivalry between Hamilton and Hito concerning where he is buried (some say neither place as he lived a long life and died in New Mexico - who knows.)  Anyway, you can visit two museums as each community has its own.

The City Council was just leaving following their meeting.  Now here's an idea on what to do with your old table cloth.

No road trip is complete without a trip to a chocolate shop and we were lucky to discover that Hito has a great one:

It was an amazing few days and I'm so happy I had them.  Thank you, Michal.