Wilbur worked the farm and had a small garden growing corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, okra, potatoes, and peanuts to feed to the hogs.  They were thankful when the regular Florida summer afternoon showers started.  They were so regular some summers you could set your watch by the rain starting around four o’clock.  If they didn’t get enough rain, they had to use the hard earned water they hauled in the wagon from Rosalie’s parents’ house to water the garden.  Rosalie loved the sound of the rain on the hot tin roof and how it cooled off the day from the scorching summer heat.  

Wilbur made other improvements, a woodshed, fences, and built a chicken coop which Rosalie tended the chickens and gathered the eggs.  He also planted orange trees and a fig tree.   It was hard living, but they had enough food to eat.  Rosalie sold eggs for a little spending money which she would often buy cloth to make clothes for the family.  In the fall they would harvest the dried corn and take it to the local miller to be ground into to corn meal and grits, the miller taking a small amount of it in trade for grinding it.

Their land was heavily wooded with oaks, hickory and pines so it first had to be cleared to make room for a garden and pastures for the cows.  Clearing the land was a social affair in which other families came to help with and with eleven siblings Wilbur had plenty of family to help.  A day was chosen, and the word spread.   On the day of the “log rolling” as it was known, everyone showed up, men, women and children making it quite an affair. The men bringing their axes, saws, cant hooks and other tools cut the underbrush and fell the trees.  A few of the best trees were saved  to make lumber and the rest were rolled into piles to burn.  While the men worked hard, the women cooked and prepared food to eat and the children played with their cousins and friends, it was quite a social affair.  Come lunch time the men took a break and had picnic feast of all the food the women had prepare then go back to work.  They would work until dusk when they would set fire to the piles of trees before going home.   

The land Rosalie’s father gave them was higher and drier than the lower hammock land that Wilbur father farmed and Wilbur’s father didn’t think it would be good for farming but Wilbur proved him to be wrong.  It did take more work to water the crops and come the next fall they had a barn full of corn, stacks of hay and a good crop of peanuts to fatten the hogs on.

Flemington Baptist Church  

In 1926 Miles Benjamin Mixson was re-elected as clerk of Flemington Baptist Church.  The church was still struggling meeting only once a month. In January collecting $32.5 and in March $1.37 in offerings but in April they did mange collecting $12.00 to pay the pastor.  Finding a regular paster was a problem.  Reverend Guss Padgett who preached several months earlier in the year was replaced by  Reverend Walden who resigned in August. The church committee searched for a new paster offering $20.00 a month to the candidates.  This was hard to meet for in September they only collected $2.35 in the offering plate.  

In December of 1927 Miles Mixson dies after serving as church clerk for the past seven years. The service held at the church was well attended and Miles was put to rest in the Flemington Baptist Church Cemetery.

Update 10.25.2021

Leigh Hall