The journey begins

As long as I can remember, I have loved the mountains. Growing up, I had an aunt and uncle who owned a rustic cabin in the mountains of northeast Georgia, and fondly remember the countless weekends the whole family would spend there together. Since those days many years ago, I have longed for my own little slice of paradise, and these notes are intended to describe the journey that began so many years ago, as they slowly evolve into reality.

I should preface this by saying that I am not paranoid or a doomsday subscriber, but I am concerned with the direction our world, and society in general, seem to be headed. We have become too dependent on others for our survival, and by "others", I mean everything from government to technology.

Hurricane Katrina was a huge wake up call for me. As I sat there in a long line of panicked motorists somewhere in South Carolina at one of the few gas stations who actually had fuel, eagerly hoping for my chance to pay over $4.00 a gallon for enough fuel to get me back home. The question quickly became, "What if there is no fuel for the trucks to bring food to the grocery store?" I soon realized that each of us are just a few days away from anarchy, or worse, starvation.

The situation eventually improved, and anarchy was avoided this time, but for me, that question, and many more, remained. With a new sense of urgency, we stepped up the search process for our dream plot of land- a place where we could begin to slowly regain control of our fate.

I won't go into the details of what a pain in the ass it is to find the perfect plot of land, nor the endless hours every free weekend of driving into the middle of nowhere only to find the actual plot was nothing like the description in the sales ad. But one day, after looking at half a dozen parcels, we decided we had just enough time left before dark to view one more.

The drive in was beautiful. A small country road wound it's way through the most beautiful valley of deep green flat land, surrounded by towering hills full of hardwoods. A rolling trout stream ran along the roadside and into the pasture fields creating a postcard landscape. An old hand hewn barn marked one end of the property, and way down the road, a wooden fence marked the other end. In between were acres of flat pasture land at the base of a mountain full of hardwood trees. The property line extended all the way up the mountain, and held within it's boundaries 29 acres of the most beautiful land I had ever stood on.

Before we drove off, I had already envisioned where to put the garden, walked off the area that would one day contain the fruit and nut orchard, found the best spot on the river to place the hydro generator, located the knoll on which the house would occupy, identified where the raspberries, blackberries and blueberry bushes would thrive, and had a pretty good idea where the vineyard would go.

I am thrilled to say that we closed on the land in December, and the journey has begun. Our first act of dependence defiance was to install a small solar collector on the barn and attach three LED flood lamps to illuminate the barn and the newly hung Christmas wreath- a very fitting start.




footnote:
If you have never read it, I would highly suggest picking up a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life. She more eloquently expresses the feeling we, and many others we are finding, share regarding the foods we consume and the commercial aspects involved in their delivery to your table.