Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to have animals - horses mostly, but I've always envisioned myself in a rural setting. Now that I'm 51 yrs old I finally get to have that life! My wonderful husband, Tom and our terrific 13 yr old daughter Stephanie have just moved into a 'hobby farm'. It's only 3 acres but is set in the midst of farm land so it looks like we live on a big farm. There is a huge barn too. Actually, the barn isn't at all set up for animals... it housed two businesses from the previous owner and it has two stories that are roughly finished and is heated and air conditioned. This is perfect for our Pottery Studio! There is another older building that was a garage and had been converted to a work shop which we will be using as our kiln building - it's made of brick. :)
We just moved in a month ago and it is the middle of winter here in Minnesota. We've been unpacking boxes and figuring out where to put everything. The studio barn doesn't have running water yet so that and new flooring are first on our list for that. The house is huge... bigger than we had been looking for, but it does make it easier to spread things out. This past week Stephanie and I farm sat for some of our new friends here. We've only lived here for 5 months and these wonderful people trusted us with the care of their home and animals. One dog, two cats, several fish, two horses, four goats (plus one extra visiting goat) and numerous chickens. As they have been living a life similar to the one we want to make, they have generously volunteered to become our mentors. So I decided to start this blog to help me keep track of this incredible journey.
We moved here in Aug. of 2009 from Voorhees, New Jersey where we'd lived for 9 years. We had no family out there and last Easter after a visit here to see Toms two brothers, realized that we really missed having family around (not mine so much...) and so Tom looked into job opportunities within his company, found one and the next thing we knew, we were here in Minnesota. We chose the Northfield area because of its strong commitment to the arts, the fact that it's rural yet has two colleges right in town and after visiting here on a house hunting trip, found that there are some of the nicest people on the planet that live here. Our daughter is thrilled with her new school, which is a charter school and project based. It's smaller and has a strong social 'curriculum'. No teasing or clicks, everyone actually gets along. I'm the volunteer coordinator there so I have been able to get to meet and talk with many of the families as well as be at the school to help with lunch time and get to know the students. It's like heaven on earth.
