Chesser Island, Okefenokee Swamp, GA

After we finished with the swamp tour, we drove down Swamp Island Drive and found a sign to Chesser Island Homestead...and, decided to see what it was:

This was such a beautiful entrance path that I couldn't resist taking this picture of Peter...the pathway is covered with large pine bark chips.

Here is a picture of the homestead from afar:

A lot of people think that the "swamp people" were poor and ignorant...but, as one person told us, if they were so dumb, they wouldn't have been able to survive so well in this unforgiving environment.

Here are some more pictures of the homestead:

This is their "garage" - the wagon lives on the left side and the buggy on the right. There's a corn crib in the middle.

The well...obviously.

The back of the house...entrance to the bedrooms. The double windows on the right look into the kitchen. You can see the top of the picket fence...it's very irregular, but charming, I think.

The side of the house...front porch to the right (there was a quilt on a frame there that could be pulled up to the ceiling when it wasn't being worked on - unfortunately I wasn't thinking, and didn't get a picture of it! Can you believe that?! I could kick myself now!)

On the far left you can just see the corner of their bathroom - on the screened in porch. There's an old cast iron tub on feet...just like the one I grew up using! Looks like it would be a wonderful place to take a bath...almost out in nature! This next picture is a little better one of the bathtub (if you look closely, you can see it on the right):

The family garden plot (fenced in, I guess, to keep all the deer and other critters out). Can you imagine being able to grow stuff in all this sand? I have enough trouble growing stuff in our rich farm dirt!: This is the sugar cane mill; they attached horses to the ends of this pole and as they walked around in a circle they made the drums turn, which squeezed the sugar juice out of the cane. It dripped down into the tray you see at the bottom and then flowed out the right side into a barrel or bucket. There is a sugar cane shed behind this, where the cane juice was boiled down into sugar. And, finally, a big old live oak tree in the side yard with spanish moss hanging off it. The whole "yard" is just sand, and supposedly they cleaned it almost every day and raked the sand to make it look presentable. It's such a nice place...I told Peter that it looked like a fun place to grow up as a kid! Even with all the work they had to do.