12/17/2003
James Kinney Farmstead summer kitchen and main house pre-mining preparations including trenching, bracing and cable set-ups.

Diary Entry:

Hughes crew here again, still putting up cables on summer kitchern.The Columbus Dispatch sent a reporter to take pictures and interview me as well as Dave Bartsch of OVCC. Kurt Leahey was here to do sketches Business going on at the farm during all this is difficult. Hay customers could not get in driveway due to Bartsch's car in driveway and trucks filling up the traffic circle. Finally got enough of them moved so the Ford 7710 tractor could get out to load hay for Mr. Ogilbee. Helen Stanford had printed up 50 papers to go to many of the state and federal politicians about the plight of the James Kinney Farmstead. She also enclosed the most recent Ohio Farm Bureau policy concerning longwall mining under historic properties. This was recently passed into state policy by the delegates of the 2003 annual meeting in Columbus.

Floyd Simpson