The flip side

What a difference a year makes! We generally know we are always evolving but when you stop and look back in diaries, journals, calendars or, say, blogs, you are transported with complete clarity. This post from a year ago brought me back into the skin of Cory, ca. 2011.

I was madly reading modern homesteading memoirs (left the big city behind for the more authentic pace of farm life) and planting a monster garden. I loved Dominique Browning's story of leaving New York City for Rhode Island and Eric Brende's tale of doctoral research turned life change among the sort-of Amish. I read at least a dozen. Yet, there we were, surrounded by nothing by fields and animals. We lived the farm life, well, ranch life.

A year later we've made the opposite move from everyone in those books. From farm to town. We are surrounded by neighbors. Our dogs are fenced in and shushed. We try to remember to draw the curtains at night. The oxen and chickens have new homes.

And yet, we love it. We love being so close to town and feeling a part of the community. We can bounce home for dinner and back out for events, take evening classes, join activities. We have shifted from being apart to being a part.

Quite a change.

Reading that old blog post had me rolling around in the memories and reflecting on these changes until the very end, when I read the last line: "Green Acres is the life for me?"

I laughed out loud. God is funny. The name of our little subdivision here in suburbia? Green Acres.

Seriously.

Further proof that this was meant to be our home. 

Back on track

Phew! What a few months it has been! We have been without access to the Internet at home, so I've not been able to post. I'm sure more details will come, but in a nutshell we moved - and then moved again.
The ranch where Jack worked (and we lived) split up last fall and we had to move quite quickly. We found a place to take our menagerie  half an hour north of town where neither Internet or cellular service dared to roam and stayed there for six months. While there, we sold the oxen, moved Joker to a retirement home, gave away the chickens and sent Skip to live with relatives. A few weeks ago we closed on a house here in suburbia, a.k.a. the land of the roving children on 4-wheelers and the 8 minute commute. All we have left are the three cats, Mater and Sluggo. Our new home is a renovation project. Perhaps I should rewrite our bio for this blog. We no longer live on a cattle ranch, but now we're marriage under construction country folk trying to make it in town. Oy!

Let the adventures begin!