Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Closing Up the Farm for Winter

Since this "farm" is a work in progress, and we use the term farm quite liberally, we usually do not make many trips down during the winter. First of all - nothing is growing and secondly, and most important in my book is there is no heat. So we drain our pipes in our little trailer and say goodbye until spring. It was a very cold weekend we chose to go down to take care of this project. As long as we were working we were fine but when we went to sit down in the evening with a little shared heater it was cold! We did have a cozy almost hot bedroom for sleeping - actually turned the heater off during the night it was so warm but everywhere else in our trailer you could see your breath.
We still had potatoes to dig - lots of large sweet potatoes and we found some surprise onions that we had missed last time. And since our apple trees did not do so well this year we stopped at an orchard and got a few apples for making applesauce. We also paused to enjoy an awesome sunset. Just incredible to watch it unfold. We hightailed it up to the ridge behind our place to watch the final moments.
I also did a little shopping in Appomattox - I happened to hit their Christmas Sale in Old Town and picked up a few fun things including a Christmas ornament to join our collection of the places we've been.
In all honesty it was a bittersweet trip. In my head I kept thinking "Please don't let this be the last time." so I looked at it through a different lens as I made the rounds of each special place. We don't want to have to sell it, we don't want to let it go ever but with the economy wreaking havoc on business it may be our only option. I hate even writing that! but as we look at properties to move our business (Loudoun County is a butthead - excuse my language) one solution we're batting around is to sell our house and our farm and buy land that will house us and the business and have some room to still play farmer. Not at all what I want to do, but then again, I certainly can't live in an icy cold trailer all winter now can I? And we have seen some nice places so it might not be all bad but I love our farm and the dreams we dream there and the way it brings our family together for fun, not to mention all the great marriage building time and the photography. Oy vay! enough already!
So enjoy the pics and keep your fingers crossed that there will be years of more!
And so that we don't end on a sad note here's a funny story. We had driven about 30 minutes towards home when I suddenly remembered I had left some things on the kitchen table - a banana and a chocolate bar. I asked John if he had by any chance picked up the banana from the kitchen table and he just looked at me and said - "Really?" ha - so either the mice have had a real feast OR it froze and will be waiting for us or it rotted and our little trailer will smell like a banana next year. Ew! makes me laugh every time I think about it.


I have lots of pics for this blog but they are not loading so I'll post and have to add pics later.

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