My beginning of the year creative juices were amping up last January as I contemplated the cozy little Bungalow in which we lived and loved to live. I began scheming over some home projects when we asked the question again..."Should we look for a new home instead of continuing to change this one?". It always seemed like a bit of a self-indulgent question as we had enough room for just the two of us and we adored our little cottage space. Though we had often daydreamed about someday, somehow living on our very own small farm. That seemed like a far distant dream...but this year something bloomed in me that pushed us to plod outward and explore the idea.
We looked and looked and found a property which we lovingly now refer to as "the Pit" (which is another story entirely that you will have to visit the farm to hear in all it's glory!) and went to see it! Bells on and sister in tow, we went to view our new potential home! The aforementioned name should let you in on the shape of the house and land we saw. We got right back in the car, energized for adventure and now half crazy to find our farm. We decided to drive around a bit and actually stumbled right over a little farm on Tuttle Hill. We called the number on the for sale sign and a few anxious months later we had a 125 year old farm and a new extended family in the previous owners whose family had built this wonderful place!
We moved in! We settled in! And had we our first year on our sweet little farm. The past 15 months have been what I like to refer to as the waking of our sleeping farm. No crops or gardens had been cultivated here for decades upon decades and the land was just whispering in anticipation and excitement of possibility! We were given car load after car load of dug up perennials and vegetables from new and old friends. My new life was all digging in fresh dirt and moving plants hither and thither, spattering colors of flowers all over the grassy acreage. It was grueling and we loved every second of it.
Our five (now four) outdoor kitties adapted to become indoor kitties quite well! We now lived on a dirt farm road which the locals love to tear up and down in their beat-up trucks and four wheelers. That, with the distant singing of the coyotes at night was enough for us to know that we'd never be able to live with the idea of a cat lost to the mean streets of farm life. Instead of running around our old gardened fenced in yard they now tore up and down the long plank board hallways of a massive farmhouse! Plenty to explore.....replete with the dank and dark spaces of the basement, coal room and root cellar! What more could any self respecting cat desire?
Many quiet mornings, coffee cup in hand, I look around this glorious little farm and ask myself how on earth were we given this gift? Is this really our farm? I don't know who saw fit to give us such an incredible dream come true or why we have been gifted such a lovely life together. I can only try (and fail and then try again) to live in this space gratefully, care for the land and it's natural inhabitants with love and concern for it's continued well being and welcome as many visitors as humanly possible to breathe the air (it's sweeter here) and feel the earth underfoot.
So, if you haven't visited to see the fields of milkweed and monarchs, the mist rising over the corn fields in the quiet early morning, the resident ground hog nibbling on clover or over ripe garden extras or heard the songs of the many kinds of birds stopping in at the feeders from the nearby forest and creek send me a quick note and stop to see us! Maybe there will even be some heirloom tomatoes left on the farm stand.
