Friday, November 13, 2009

The Beginning--Hubby, Farm and Cat Came Packaged Deal

This will be a journal, more or less, of our trials, tribulations, successes, and oh, yes, the many failures of the humble and ongoing beginnings of our natural-food farm.

I wish I had known about such things as blogs seven years ago when we started this great adventure, or mis-adventure as the case may be, as it could have been very therepuetic for me getting through those trails as well as a chance to share the funny times. So to bring everyone up to date, I'll spend the first 20 entries here rehashing the past seven years on this journey of two city-slickers trying to cope with the wild weather, wild animals and unruly soil of 16 acres of Central Texas prairie.

Installment #1: THE BEGINNING: Hubby and I married in 2001. He came as a package deal and so did I. I came with six parrots, two horses, and two dogs. He came with a cat and 16 acres in central Texas. I think he got the short end of the stick. I had more mouths to feed.

The 16 acres did not have a tree on the place and fences were in great disrepair. It also had a very old mobile home that was to be temporary "lq" as he built his real home, a two-story frame home. That attempt to build his dreamhome was made a few years before we met and married, while he was married to a former wife. Unfortunately the house was a victim of a Texas thunderstorm. It was hit twice by lightning before the interior could be completed or he ever even got to move in. Hubby managed to repair the damage the first time, but the second hit, different storm, burned it to the ground, perhaps along with what was left of that marriage.

By the time I entered the picture a year or more later, that wife was gone but some of the ruins of the house were not, so our first order of business was to try to clean up what was left. You can't just pile it on the curb 5 miles from the nearest tiny burg or 30+ miles from the nearest real town with city services. We piled as much as we could in our two pick-ups and hauled it to the Mexia dump some 30 miles away. The drought had moved in by then, a long one, and county-wide burn bans prevented us from getting rid of the rest of it. So the property was not only treeless but a bit junky. Not exactly a pleasant beginning of my dreams of a country home.

Until tomorrow...to be continued.

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