Post #1

Here we are, the J's in Iowa, and this is the first of many posts about our little piece of heaven.

A little background:

Me (Darin): Husband, father, son, brother, teacher, coach, and intensive farmer wanna-be

Her (Melissa): Wife, daughter, sister, teacher, coach, and driven crazy by above mentioned "Me".

Smaller Her (Gabrielle): Oldest daughter, basketball player, book junkie, smart and quiet, but never one to let her opinion go unheard.

Smallest Her (Faith): Youngest daughter, hip on computer stuff, wants an iPod, cell phone, and laptop....you get the idea.

Melissa and I lived in a small town in rural Iowa for 8 years, and always talked about the "what if" of owning an acreage. We'd been looking for a while, but everything, EVERYTHING was either junk that needed to be burnt down and started over with, or it was way over priced.

Just as it seemed hope was lost, we stumbled over a flyer for a land auction with the acreage to be sold seperate. Much to our surprise, it was a place we'd looked many many times as being the "ideal" place: outside of town, just off the blacktop, close to a couple of neighbors. Anyway, saw the flyer on a Saturday, and that following Saturday was the auction, so we set up a time to get into the house and poke around a little bit. What we saw made us think, sure, why not?? So we quick penciled out some numbers, and went to the auction the following day. You can probably guess what happened....we walked out of that auction the proud owners of a new 2.75 acre property!

Thankfully, we were able to sell our house in town right before the housing bubble popped, and moved into our place in June of 2007. Before we moved in, we had the kitchen gutted and redone from the studs out, which made a fairly unusable room into the center piece of the house. Last year, we took care of a leaky roof (excellen work and at a fair price), and this summer, we are putting up a garage/animal area with the idea that we'll eventally get into some kind of animals at our place.

The plan for right now is to expand out are gardening area, but do it in a smart way, being more intensive with the food we grow. Extras of everything will be put through our local organic food group, with hope of possibly making our little piece of land work for us in a way that is both acceptable in the monetary sence (a little extra cash isn't a bad thing) but also in an environmental way as well. Today in fact, my oldest daughter and I planted tomatoes, eggplants, and pumpkins, with others to be planted soon.

My plan for this blog, to simply update what our life is like working, raising kids, and trying to create some profit out of the land we've purchased. If we can make only one of those work, we'll be doing great, but I believe if I can keep myself honest here, it will only keep my own motivation level up as it gets hot our, plants die, or I just don't feel like doing anything. Who knows!?!? :-)

That's it for right now, and pictures will be posted soon.

If you've gotten this far, give yourself a gold start