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.