May-June
We are not ready to be done with our full time RV life but we will not be traveling as far or seeing as much as we spend time to prepare our new home on the farm in Tennessee. We are still living in the RV but for now we are traveling back and forth from a campground in Texas to a campground in Tennessee. Hopefully in the next month we will have our RV and our son’s trailer and daughter and son-in-law’s fifth wheel on the farm. We also hope in the not too distant future to have our youngest daughter and her boyfriend join us at the farm.
On May 17th we closed on the 36.5 acres we are buying in Lafayette Tennessee with a couple of our children and their families. Our family members own lots 16, 21, 22, and 23. Lot 20 had already sold to another family shortly before we bought our lots. Our house will built on the 6.60 acre lot 23. Both our lot and lot 16 have natural springs on them.
Then on May 20th we closed on the sale of our house and said good-bye to our beautiful house. We hope the new buyers will enjoy it as much as we have these last 8 years.
May 24th– We left Porter, Texas and headed north to our property in Lafayette, Tennessee. We convoyed with my daughter Sara and son-in-law and their children. Rather than have their two cats ride cooped up in their truck they got to come ride in our RV with Teddi. The three cats got along great and throughout the drive I had different cats on my lap so they could keep an eye on the road for us.
We stopped for a picnic lunch before reaching Tom Sawyer’s Campground just outside of Memphis this evening and stopped for the night.
May 25th– Got to Dad’s Bluegrass Campground in Franklin, Kentucky. It is an hour from our land but the best place for us all to stay for now. Once we got in we were all ready to head out to the farm. We arrived to find the family who bought the one other open property working on their land. The kids hit it off right away as they had two girls who are close in age to my daughter Sara’s oldest children. We arrived to find there were still horses in the barn on our farm so we gave the previous owner a call to see if he had decided to throw the horses in with the farm. In a couple days they were picked up and gone.
May 26th– Sunday and we went to church where we meet old friends that we have known for over 25 years from when we use to live in Tennessee and also meet new friends.
May 27th– Today was a church Memorial Day Picnic at Winding Stairs Park in Lafayette. It is a beautiful park and Frank and I enjoyed a short hike while the younger ones head off to climb the many stairs up and down to the water. Then it was up to show the kids around Red Bowling Springs where my mother-in-law’s family were originally from.
May 28th through May 31st– We all spent lots of time driving back and forth to work on the farm. We have so much to do from getting a road put in (currently the road is only 4 wheel drive friendly), to getting mailboxes placed. When we arrived the weeds had grown tall and where almost knee high so we ended up hiring our neighbor’s Uncle to bush hog the property.
June 2nd– We are enjoying the church here. It is small with only about 100 people but they have lots of activities. Today after church they had potluck and we enjoyed all the wonderful food. I contributed my German Potato Salad and it was fun sitting around and getting to know more of the members.
June 3rd through June 6th– Spent time working on trying to clear a path through the woods from our property down to the creek and spring. We found a game trail and made some progress before discovering how many ticks were residing in those woods. Even with long sleeves, long pants and boots we managed to both pick up a few and decided maybe we should wait until fall to do more clearing. We did find the wooded area around the farm has tons of wild roses and blackberries. We are looking forward to making lots of blackberry preserves once we are able to get settled on the land.
June 7th– We had to head back to Houston. Frank started the process of getting upper dentures implanted six months ago and we have to finish that process with the Dentist here since we have already paid for the work. So for the next several months we will make trips back to Texas when he has an appointment.
June 8th through June 27th – Was spent at the campground we had been staying at in New Caney, Texas previously. While here Frank had some dental work done, we tried to get our water heater fixed and spent time with my other daughter Hana and her boyfriend. I even got to do a little substitute work at my former job Kingwood Music School.
June 28th– Heading back to Tennessee for a few weeks to try and get some more work done at the farm before the next trip we have to make back to Texas. We will try and post to the blog occasionally to keep everyone updated at the progress on the farm. While we have been gone Sara and her husband have continued to work on the farm and where able to trim back trees so that they could get in the old milk shed and explore it.
About 20 plus years ago our farm was a small dairy farm. Now we need to figure out how we utilize it.
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