Getting Started

This is new for me. I have been reading so many blogs of our friends in PA and enjoyed being able to "catch up" and see what they are up to. I realized, being in TN with all of our family and friends all over the country, that no one knows what is going on with us. I definitely don't have time to email each person, I actually tried that for awhile. So this is my atempt to stay in touch.

For those who have not heard from us in a while, we are starting a farm. Eric has been researching this for about 9 months now (for 5 of those months I had no idea). One day during one of our evening "catch-me-up" on what is going on conversations, he told me what he was spending all of his time on (since canceling his World of Warcraft account). His plan was to buy a piece of uncleared land and build a log cabin with our trees, and then a farm. As crazy as that sounds, I knew that was what we needed to do. That was the first time that I really felt the spirit tap me on the shoulder (as I was ready to rant and tell him how crazy he was) and say "he is right", so I immediately shut my mouth. Since then the plan has changed just a bit. We are NOT building a log cabin. As neat as that would be to live in, it scares me to think about building it. We would have if we found the right piece of land for that, but as luck would have it everything fell into place and we found 21 acres with 1 large creek, a stream in the woods and a spring. It is the most beautiful place I have seen, and it is exactly what I was hoping for when we moved here to TN.

As for the farm, we are planning on raising beef cattle, sheep, chickens, pigs and some goats (mostly for clearing land). Our Anatolian Shepard puppy was born on Nov. 30. He will live outside with the sheep and keep them safe from predators. We already planted the first 7 trees of our orchard (Fuji and Gala apples, pear and nectarine) and in the spring we will plant the plums, cherries and apricot along with the blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. We really can't wait until we can harvest the fruit. We would go broke if we bought all the fruit that we would like to eat.

We will again have a large garden, but the soil on this farm is so much better than the red clay we have now, I can't wait to see the difference it will make.

The girls have already decided that they love it there and have spent most of thier free time exploring in the creek. Even in the cold a creek will draw the kids to play in it. Tanner calls it "big water" and keeps telling us "take hammer, build house".

Things are going so fast now and I have so many things that I have to do. We just finalized the plans for the house we are building ourselves. So now we can decide where it will go and then put in a driveway so we don't always have to walk all the way back. Designing my own house is a dream I have always had. My parents designed and built their house, so I always had the idea, even as a kid, that I would do that too. As I grew up I realized how much work that would be and that my father really didn't want to build me a house, not that I blame him. But after the log cabin idea, building a house out of lumber is looking a whole lot easier. Dad will still be there to make sure everything is even and level (not my strong point) and Eric and I are the hard labor. It is exciting and scary all at the same time