Rural Gardening: Adventures on Dirt Rich Farm (City goes Country) Part 2, 1 by Hineni

Hineni wrote:
Well, as promised, here is an update on our escapades! Due to some unforeseen issues, we ended up having to move to Tennessee just a few days after DH quit his job and moved to the farm. It was a blessing disguised as something else, so I'm really trying to get over the losses and move forward, but sometimes I'm still a little hurt and puzzled. We left behind a full asparagus bed (with transplants from MsRobin), a full garlic bed (with gifts from Darius and a neighbor), an Alpine strawberry patch, three 5 year old blueberry bushes, two Cripps Pink apple trees, Damson plum trees, two peach trees, a Sugar Mapleand some huckleberry bushes that we had all bought and planted at the VA property. We contemplated digging it all up but decided that was too mean-spirited and just too time consuming in addition to having to move all of our just-moved-to-VA stuff now over to a new place.

But the new place...ahhhhhh, it is a wonderful, quiet and beautiful place in the boonies. Yes, I should change the heading to City goes Country goes to the Boonies! We have a little rental house on an acre that sits on the edge of 130 acres of pasture and woods. Our landlords live on property on the 130 acres, but you can't see them nor they us! In fact, we can see no neighbors at all here. The closest actual neighbor is probably a half mile away on the road. We share access to a nice large tobacco barn which gave us adequate storage space for all of my extra "stuff". Our house is larger, with three full bedrooms (with real closets!) and a much larger kitchen with cabinets and a large utility/storage room. While I'm not completely unpacked yet (maybe 2/3's done), we still have more functional room even with boxes taking up nearly one full bedroom and 1/3 of the living room, and NO DUST OR MUD! Yay!!!

The best part of all of this is on behalf of my Great Pyrs - they are finally happy and free and no one cares that they bark at night, or investigate the pastures or play in the creek. The change in their demeanor is worth everything we've gone through over the last 6 weeks! They assist with watching the cattle in pasture, so they are getting to do some of what they are bred to do. While they still have a great affinity for my pots and plants, we hope to work on that over the next few months.

Here is a photo of our shared barn and the cattle cage thing that will be made into a temporary potting shed for me by utilizing a tarp over the back half of it. It's the reddish metal thing with the arched roof. Currently it is keeping my tempting plastic milk jugs out of puppy jaws :)
There is also a nice maple showing in the photo and one of the three forsythias on the property. Behind the barn is the corral, which is currently full of cattle preparing to go to auction next week. Which means....FREE POOP! One of the wonderful gifts of sharing this property is all the cow poop I wish to pick up and wheel back to the compost bins and garden. Only a gardener would be so thrilled with cow poop, I know. But hey, it saves a buck, yes?

Next post, the virgin garden site!