At the Old farm for 25 years I started thousands of seed this time of year. 36x100 High Tunnels and Green Houses full of trays to plant in the 17 acre market garden and to sell at Markets to get the season opening going with some fresh cash coming in after the winter of nothing coming in. I was sitting putting tomato seeds into their cells in the flat last night and thought about the times before 2020. I finished up putting 24 Pink Brandywine seeds into 24 Cells and thought to myself "THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER than using the seed vac to put 6,000 Pink Brandywine seed in cells!" My old farm continues on without me ) New Owners, Young Owners that are my age when I relocated and made the farm a lot bigger than the 6 acres I started on in 1997 and relocated to 40 acres in 2006 and had bumped up to 160 acres by 2010. A new Farm Name, New Owners in their 30s, A lot carrying on the same and A LOT unique and different to fit the new owners vision for the future. I still visit and they often call asking for advice. It kind of made me sad that they chose to not raise hogs or chickens and shrank the Garden from 17 acres down to 2 acres turning the 15 additional acres into more cattle pasture. It is all good though LOL processing 20,000 Chickens per year under the poultry exemption is NOT fun even when you can burn through 200 birds per hour LOL. Hogs are a lot of work as well and pasture hogs more so as they always find some way to escape the pasture and 17 acres of produce is just brutal without hiring a seasonal crew to maintain and harvest it weekly for the Markets and CSA's. My secret to not only surviving but thriving in a business where most fail hard within 1-3 years was not size or scale but diversity and becoming a master of every aspect of that diversity. It worries me a bit for them that they are not very diverse with only cattle, a few specialty crops and the 5 acre Orchard. The less diverse the deeper the impact when one thing goes sideways or crashes and less loss you can absorb and carry on. The Cattle have and will for the foreseeable future be a high profit and relatively easy income. A lot of things though could go sideways to bring that market crashing down. It also concerns me how much debt they took on in just buying the Old Farm even with me selling it to them at around $500,000 less than it was worth and throwing in a lot of equipment. The Monthly payment is just huge from my perspective. Nope not my problem or my responsibility anymore but I do want to see the old farm carry on and survive a long way in to the future. I did not want to effectively retire in 2020 the circumstances with my dying wife and then Covidmania just made it impossible for me to keep everything going beyond the Cattle and the Plants and those I had to scale way back. I could have survived and even continued to do well through Covidmania or I could keep my promises and vows to my wife. I chose my wife and taking care of her until she passed away in late 2023. I have never regretted that choice. It has been 2 years and 4 Months since she passed away. And things have been kind of unfocused and crazy since or rather were. In July 2024 the thought of selling the last 40 acres of the old farm started creeping into my mind. I had fully retired on January 1st 2024 at age 55 right on my planned schedule but nothing else had gone as planned, Me and the wife were supposed to retire together and every plan after retirement just kind of sank in the mud. I knew if I kept the remainder of the old farm that I would start doing it again and growing and it would become my life again. So by August I had decided to sell it and started sorting and packing up and loading trailers. 2024 was sort, pack, load go look at several properties in TN and MO and meet women and date in those areas and return back and sort, pack load more and repeat. I finally had every trailer loaded, with about 8 loads of stuff that wouldn't fit on the trailers. I still had not found the right property and sure had not found the right woman LOL we just not going to talk about that one that poisoned me and the dogs I had to find NewHome to move to before I could sell the Old Farm. It is kind of funny how I found this place NewHome. I had found a place in TN that met almost all of my criteria except one...... It was raw land that I would have to build a cabin on. But I decided to buy it anyway and drove all the way there to put it under contract and the agent knew I was on my way to put it under contract. He put it under contract with someone else before I had even left the old farm for our scheduled meeting that afternoon. Instead of calling me he let me drive the 5 hours to tell me "Oh Sorry that went under contract this morning." I was just a little pissed off over that one. There was this place in Missouri that was not a big drive from where I was at in TN. So I called the Realtor for it and asked if we could meet the following morning and me look at it. Instead of going back home I just drove up to Cape and got a hotel room and drove over to the property at 10am the next morning. 30 minutes later the seller accepted my offer and NewHome was under contract and 2 weeks later the closing happened and I had deed in hand. That was last May and the closing the first day or two of June. I was moved out of the old farm by July 1st and the Old farm was under contract July 3rd and closed on August 14th. In the meantime after the move was moved I went and visited a woman in NC that I had met in 2024 and had stayed in touch and talked to a lot and after a 3 week Vacation there, I was informed that I was not going back to MO without her. Sooo we drove the New Tundra I had bought in Jacksonville NC back to MO and grabbed a empty 24' cargo trailer and drove back to NC to load her stuff up and move it to MO. and then bounced back to NC with a livestock trailer to bring her critters and more totes of stuff. Lorrie is now my wife we married in a very small ceremony with only a couple of close friends present. LOL everyone was like WOW that was fast, you have only known each other like 7 Months. Fact is we had known each other for closer to 2 years, just neither of us were willing to move 1000 miles away from our own places. Her son has since moved into her house at her place and is doing his thing with his family there. Lorrie also is retired at a fairly young age as well. So we are Me 57 and her 59 and both of us in very good health and reasonably good shape. We love doing the same things Fishing, Kayaking, Gardening, Critters and building things. Now instead of doing it alone we are doing all of that stuff together. When we came back to get the cargo trailer to move we spent 3 days here before heading back to NC and she fell in love with SEMO and this place. So we have been together here for the last 8 Months and Married for the last 2 weeks. We had a long talk early on about what we wanted to do going forward. We both are into the farmstead/homestead thing and being as self sufficient as is possible but neither of us want that to be all consuming and all we do. LOL and we both love to PLAN. So over the winter we planned and came up with a raised bed garden with twelve 36" Wide x 20' long x 18" high raised beds for the garden this year. The Rabbits, the Khaki Ducks and 14 Laying hens and a couple of roosters and 4 breeding hens. And plant a dozen fruit trees. And spending 3-4 days per week at NewHome working and taking care of things and 3-4 days per week Kayaking, hiking, Camping and fishing. We cook about the same as well and go heavy on Tomatoes, pepper, Summer squash, Red Potatoes, Green Beans and Cucumbers. And the herbs Thyme, Chives, Garlic, Rosemary, Oregano, sage and dill. I always grow the same tomato varieties year after year, Pink and Red Brandywine, Better Boy and Chocolate Cherry. The Peppers are always Cayenne, Jalapeno, Gypsy, Merlot Bell, and a few Habanaros. So last night I sat on the porch after a very nice 75 degree day filling seed tray cells with potting mix and putting the first 24 seeds in the first tray of 2026 and thinking about all of the past that brought me to the here and now. The years since 2020 I have not even planted even a small garden. Life went from every moment being taking care of a a wife with Dementia that was rarely home in the head to taking care of a wife with dementia and advanced pancreatic cancer........ One terminal illness was bad enough two was just horrible. LOL I don't think I slept from February 2020 through October 2023 Then the time after her death was just total insanity and chaos. So the last 8 Months together with Lorrie with stability, direction and a almost strange calm normal has been great..... Better than great actually. Our biggest argument is where the living/dining room furniture goes and how it is arranged LOL. A lot of folks advised me to remain single and alone and that I would be happier being retired that way. Nope I wouldn't, I would have been if I had not found the RIGHT best friend and partner in adventuring. And that was like finding a diamond in the middle of a mountain of coal. I am nothing but happy that Lorrie came here, the was absolutely no way I could have went to coastal NC and ever been happy. It is a great place to visit and go out on the Atlantic on her brothers boat but after a week of being there my urge to return to the Ozarks and Home is STRONG. We plan to go to NC every 3 to 4 Months for a week or two to visit her family. We bought a nice used camper and put it on her place for us to stay in while visiting and left the Chevy Equinox there to drive around..... It is a lot easier and actually cheaper to fly there than to drive the round trip. It works out well as I have a couple of younger cousins stationed at Camp Lejeune that I have enjoyed visiting while Lorrie runs around with her Mom and Siblings. LOL way too much thinking about these things while putting 24 seeds in cells Spring is nearing fast and the time to get the peppers and tomatoes started is here. Next I need to build the raised beds and have Chris my new cattle ranching friend and truck driver Rock guy bring me a couple semi loads of his composted cow manure to fill the raised beds with.......... Since I don't have mountains of my own cow crap to compost and fill raised beds with anymore. That is the one big drawback to here VS the Old Farm........ The soil just plain sucks for growing anything and there are more rocks 1" -2" under the surface than soil If I were a Rock Farmer I would be Rock Rich! I love all of the rocks though they are great natural resource with all of the timber to build and do projects with. Just if I want a garden top soil and composted manure have to be trucked in and raised beds are really the only option to grow in. Just a part of living in a small valley between 3 big hills/small mtns in the SEMO Ozarks
Congratulations on your recent marriage may you have many happy years together you deserve it after that crazy bitch tried to kill you. Too bad about the soil here in coastal SC it is sand over the years I have improved with compost and cover crop. Not a big garden one is 50x50 and the other I about the same size.
