Full Circle

Hi and welcome to my blog. I've had a dream to move to the country for many years now. It has finally happened! Today, we closed on our dream house. It's a cozy little house far from the city. It has 6 1/2 acres, a barn, springhouse, and two ponds. It's everything I've ever wanted. We get to move in towards the end of this month. I'm trying to be patient, but it's hard.

I didn't grow up on a farm, but I did grow up in the country. I'm not a complete city slicker. I am currently going to school for environmental science at Ohio State while working full-time. I'm very passionate about the health of the environment and living as 'green' as I can. I'm really looking forward to being able to provide a significant portion of our food.

Let me explain the title of this post. I did a lot of web searching about our little home. It was built in 1823 and I just knew there had to be all kinds of history out there on the web. In tandem with this research I signed up for the free trial on ancestry.com. I found out that my paternal 5th great-grandfather lived in the same township where this house is. I always said that area felt like home to me. I thought it was because some of my mom's relatives lived in the area. I had no idea that my father's family had settled there when they came to Ohio from Virginia in the 1800's.

I found an atlas of this county that was completed in 1875. I couldn't believe it, but there was a sketch of this house as it looked then! It was a quaint little farm in full production. It showed sheep and cattle in the fields, buggies passing by on the dirt road (it's still a dirt road), people completing all types of farm chores. It was glorious. Next, I looked at the map of the township. Something caught my eye....I looked a little to the left of this farm and saw my first initial and last name. Goosebumps jumped up on my arms. My 4th and 5th great-grandfathers lived three farms over from the farm I was buying. It just felt like this was meant to be. My family has come full circle.

I plan on starting with chickens, and graduating to bigger livestock. I definitely want goats, and I have just fallen in love with all of the donkeys I've read about on my favorite blogs. We're very inspired by the Fabulous Beekman Boys and see way too many similarities in our relationship. I have a lot of work(and learning) ahead of me. I hope that you'll all enjoy reading about my journey. It's sure to be entertaining! Posts may be kind of sporadic until we get moved in and settled, but they'll be coming.

Cheers,
Jeff