Green Acres indeed

Green Acres. That was my brothers comment. Which gave me pause.....after all we are two city (ish) people who are going to try to "farm". Why just the other day I was looking at ads in the paper. One was for Macy's. Hot new fall fashions, it read. Meh, I said, and instead turned to the Rural King ad and started jonesing for the the coveralls for $19.99. What just happened here? You, gentle reader can be the judge.

ARGH!

Yep, we have another driveway from HELL. Just as I was crowing about how lovely and level our driveway was. I spoke too soon. The garage end of the house was way taller than the ground level, thus we have this. For those of you who hated the Signal Hill drive, well you are gonna just love this one. Bring your cleats and and crampons.

Tom near the site of future basement toilet.

This is the lower level (sounds better than basement). It will have a small family room, full bath and 2 small bedrooms, plus a small unfinished area for starting plants. No, do not think of the TV series "Weeds". We are starting vegetable plants for the farm. You can't smoke 'em. Note the huge retaining wall on the right. We will have to engineer someway to make the slope more gentle or part of the land will end up on our back patio. A full deck will go above the gravel area (16 x 32). Par-tay deck!

Looking from the garage floor over to front porch.

Uh, front porch is also very high up. May need a rail so Tom doesn't plunge off it when he goes out to get the mail. This will all make more sense after they start framing.

Site of future bobsled run?

See how the land really slopes down from the garage? Where the heck are we going to put the wood burning oven and grill? I could see poor Tom chasing after a runaway grill armed with only a spatula.

Actually that would be pretty funny.

What else? We have a kitchen bid we like. Hope this does get done by Thanksgiving. I have visions of trying to make dinner in our incredibly limited, cramped kitchen here. We have no room in the refrigerator so we would have to sit at the table and eat until everything was gone. Probably could only cook a 10 lb turkey too.

Wow, Kate just texted me that my Shenandoah Valley apple cake recipe is going to be on the menu at Bevier Hall at U of I. I feel like I have been "published".

Off we go now, talk at ya'all later. Haw Haw, I said "ya'all". Shall we call it Creeping Green Acres Syndrome?

But wait there's more....

This week more stuff happened.

The walls were poured.

Here's what it looks like so far:

Tom bothers workmen

Actually Tom wanted so bad to write in the new concrete. Maybe when they pour the garage floor?

Front porch.

It doesn't look like much. But some day we'll be a settin' and a rockin'. Yep. You betcha! Opps, I didn't mean for that Palinism to creep in. I promise I will not shoot any moose or grizzly bears.

Basement?

I never know what I am looking at. Maybe if they let me have a dollhouse mock up?

The new driveway from hell.

It's flat but when it snows did you think we were going to plow it?

350' long. Nope. We will just make sure we have a full pantry and wine

 rack, then we will see you when it thaws.

We have been discussing what to grow. When we went to the Goshen market here in Edwardsville, we were so disappointed. Everyone had the same vegetables. BORING!

And not that many heirloom varieties, which we would like to grow. What do some of you think?

We are also going to have someone till up the "farm" area in the front of the lot. If Tom were to try and do this with the rototiller it would take months. Soil looks pretty good. Mostly Loess. Kate will know what I am talking about :-) Meantime we have every weedy grass known to man. At least the land has sat fallow and herbicide/pesticide free for 3 years. If we go for the organic certification that is the first requirement.

Went to talk to a guy who does IKEA kitchens. Ivan something. Tom kept calling him Igor. Anyway, we went to his showroom, which turned out to be a room behind his mother's alteration business. Interesting. He is onto something, but us being old and set in our ways, felt it was as bit too experimental for us and too much customizing. I wish there was an IKEA here, that would be sweet.

Not much else to report. Tom is in the lazy ass phase of retirement, so never call us before 10 AM.

I am trying to get all my volunteer hours in for my Master Gardener certification (I need 60 ).

Emailing or calling me and asking what the heck is wrong with your tomatoes does not qualify.

O.F.F. (Owen Family Farm) the beaten path

Oh joy.
Joe, the builder (not to be confused with Joe, the son) called at 7:58 AM this morning to say that the basement was being excavated.
It has been a long strange trip to get to this point.
Along the way we have discovered the fun of owning property in the country (not to count the buffalo gnats, coyotes that eat small dogs, and lack of basic untilities).
But I digress, we have the beginnings of the Owen Family Farm. Hope you all like that name. Tom came up with it, perhaps in a drunken stupor, but there you have it. I kinda like it....
Besides, it will look cute on all the souvenir t-shirts, coffee mugs and tchatchkes that we will make you purchase along with your heirloom tomatoes and eggplants.

Here are Ryan, Tim and Joe staking out house dimensions

Little Mr. Helpful (Tom)

See those poles? Yeah, well, we own 'em!

The story of the poles.

Gather round children and I will tell ye of the legend of the poles. You see there was no power to be found on said land, even though verily, there was power just across the road. It seems in days of yore, MJM Electric and CIPS divided the kingdom in to two realms, and we got stuck on the losing side. Long story short, we had to cough up $8,750 to Ameren to run power from beautiful downtown Otterville. And it only took them about 2 months to do so, thus delaying our home building. And oh yeah, we had to get easements from property owners. Luckily of the 3 people I know in all of Jersey County, 2 proved to be very helpful. Thanks Kim and Stan. Six degrees of separation later we got the OK.

Those of you who are reading this and thinking, what the f--k are Tom and Debbie up to? Here is a quick intro. I retired in Jan. 2010. Tom retired in August. We have been dreaming for years of owning land so we can start a small organic "farm". So 3 years ago we bought the property in  Jersey County. That's what OFF is. The plan is to plot out an acre or so of soil. And plant, and plant, and plant. Plan to sell some at local farmer's markets and some to chefs. That's the plan. If not, all of you are getting drive by vegetable shootings. Yeah, because no one would ever suspect the zucchini....

Enough, it's late and we want to watch Mad Men. More later.