The Farm Has a Blog - 2016 January 10

For many years, Papa & I have dreamed of owning a small piece of property in rural Indiana. Although  our house sits on 2 1/2 acres, we've dreamed of being out where there are few or no restrictions on the property. We finally realized our dream 3 years ago. Now we want to be able to document what we're doing. For several years, I have dreamed of having enough time to work on our farm while also having enough time to blog about it. I've tried to satisfy my desire by posting on facebook but it's hard to go back and review what I've written. I thought a log would be an excellent way of keeping family and friends up-to-date on what we are doing. And it would be a wonderful way of documenting our progress on our goals and easily reviewing that progress. So often, we work hard toward goals without ever acknowledging our progress. In order to prevent this from happening, today I am finally starting our blog. It helps, of course, that just 2 days ago I officially retired.

Here's a little history. After viewing a lot of different properties, we purchased our little farm 3 years ago in December 2012. . As funny as it may sound, from the time we stepped out of the truck, it just felt right. It was late fall and everything was very overgrown. There was no house on the property, which was one of our must haves. There was also no septic. The driveway was very steep and washed out. The pond was empty and the barn roof leaked. Had there been snow on the ground, we would not have made it up to the end of the drive. After walking around the property for about 30 minutes, we headed back home while discussing why we shouldn't buy it. Two hours later, we were home and I was convinced we had found our retirement "home". We made an offer the next day and closed on 12/31/12.

Over the past 3 years, we've made enormous progress in some areas while making very little progress in others. I'll be blogging about our current adventures while also trying to capture all that has happened over the past 3 years. We've traded the camper and outhouse for a "house" and real bathrooms. We have working mowers/tractors and a fairly well developed garden spot. We have a reworked drive that still is mostly impossible to get up in snow and ice. But we're making progress and the farm is now a very pleasant, comfortable place to stay. Overall, an amazing place.


View from the guest room window this morning


View from the back door this evening

Oh, and the adventure/unpredictability/excitement of a farm is always with us. While I sit here starting this blog, I'm waiting for Papa to arrive because the water is once again frozen. Last winter, many of our pipes broke so he worked extensively on the water system this past fall getting it ready for winter. Not sure where the issue is located tonight because there are so many possible areas of failure. At least for now, I'm sitting in the warm house while it is 5* outside, snowy & windy.

Welcome to our farm. It's a challenge, an aggravation and our little piece of heaven all rolled into one.