Finally, A Weekend Away

This past weekend Jamie and I attended the 2018 PickTN Conference in Chattanooga, TN. Being busy newbie farmers leaves us little time for couple getaway weekends, so we made the most of it and found some interesting places to stop along the way.

The first place we found was Mooney’s Emporium in Monteagle, TN. The billboard mentioned a yarn shop. I’m a fiberphile, and I needed a hit. Mooney’s didn’t disappoint. There were lovely skeins to admire and pet. Jamie even seemed entertained and let me tell him all about all the different kinds, brands, and colors.

After the Thursday sessions were over we found a great restaurant downtown. It was about a half mile from the hotel and the temperature was around 70 degrees, so we walked, and even ended up eating outside—a special treat for February in the Tennessee mountains. The restaurant was Urban Stack and it was gourmet burgers. There were several different and unique options. It was delicious.

My favorite place of all was one we found on the way home—The Mountain Goat Market, also in Monteagle, TN. Friendly service, colorful and quirky décor, and interesting gift items for purchase. They had pizza, salads, and sandwiches, and many, many desserts to choose from I would recommend some items, but everything we ate was incredible. You really can’t go wrong in ordering. If you’re in or passing through the area, it’s well worth the stop.

We had a great time together and at the conference, but it’s always so nice to come home. I think the animals missed us more than the kids, but it was a close call. Either way it’s good to be home.

500 Baby Trees in the Ground

There are few things more rewarding than the exhaustion you feel from working hard for a purpose, especially when that purpose is achieving your dream. I wouldn't say it went off without a hitch. There were plenty of hitches. Two of which were when I dropped my non-water resistant iPhone in the toilet not once, but two days in a row. Hitches and all, I would still call it a successful first planting. It would not have been, however, if not for a simple mistake made by UPS.

Let me start by saying it was a rough four days of working all day long. At the end of the day Jamie, my dad, and I all walked significantly slower back to our cars than we had walked out to the field in the morning. Being unable to straighten our backs and knees all the way had something to do with it, I'm sure. It took great effort to make it up the stairs to the shower once we got home. It hurt but it felt so good when at the end of each day I paused for water and to stretch my back, and I looked around for the first time--the rest of the day had been spent bending down and looking at the dirt I was packing in around the trees--and I saw all the rows of tiny green sprouts standing proud. Happiness washed over all the achy muscles, bruises, and scratches.

This was the first time we had done this type of farming and to this scale. Jamie and my dad both grew up on farms and have plenty of experience with planting, but each type of planting is a little different, and none of us had planted Christmas trees. Jamie and I researched our options and bought a power head and an auger. It was moderately expensive considering we won't see income for at least four years. The only size anyone had in stock was six inches and we needed smaller, so we ordered it online. A week later we found a YouTube video on planting Christmas trees using a dibble bar. It looked manageable and simple. Even though the dibble bar would be more work, we knew we would both feel pride from sweating for our land. Plus, it was a fraction of the price of the power head/auger combo. We ordered two and took the power head and auger back that night.

 When our baby tree-lets arrived it felt like Christmas morning. There were so many boxes the UPS man had to use a hand cart. There were six boxes total. Four boxes of trees, a box of groceries that I had ordered, and another one I didn't really look at until the UPS man had left. It was the power head that we had taken back. I was confused. There was a label with Jamie's name on it. A quick text to Jamie confirmed that he had not ordered another one. The next day the UPS man delivered two more boxes: our final box of trees, and the auger. This time I didn't have to sign, so he just left them outside. After closer examination we found a second shipping label on the boxes for "Unknown" with a Wisconsin address. We didn't want to keep Mr. Unknown from receiving his auger, but we thought we'd wait to return it again after the planting weekend to make sure we didn't need it.

We had talked to knowledgeable people about their processes and that helped, however the biggest factor was the makeup of our exact type of dirt, and it turns out our dirt was a lot rockier than we guessed it would be. We planted about twenty trees in our first hour using the dibble bars. We did the math on how long it would take to plant 500 trees at that rate, and immediately went back home for the auger. When using it, we were able to loosen the soil and then come behind with the planting bar to easily firm it up with no air pockets around the roots at a rate of about sixty per hour--much faster. It still took us all of four days straight of hard work, but the trees are now in the ground. And it may have taken weeks had UPS checked their labels more carefully. We are thankful for hitches and for whoever Unknown is, and we are most thankful that our first crop of trees has been planted and our farm has officially begun.

Click here to see our FULL planting day video!

For the Love of Christmas

Jamie and I have been known to make impulsive decisions. We are committed to each other and strangely to our vehicles, but not much else. I haven't gone to the same hair stylist or dentist more than twice since I was eighteen and living with my parents. Jamie and I have lived in eight different residences since we were married twelve years ago--nine if you count the hotel we were in for a month when our hot water heater busted and flooded our downtown apartment. Every house we've owned we call a garage sale house. This means we were driving around with no intentions of moving, saw a sign, and said the famous last words, "It couldn't hurt to look." We are typically pantsers (fly by the seat of our pants) and rarely planners. That's how we knew this time was different. Our most recent move was thoughtful. It started with a commitment, and then purposely looking for 15-20 acres of land with visibility and good access to main roads, somewhere we could finally put down roots--both our family's and actual tree roots.

Growing up I remember having a real tree at Christmas. I remember the fresh pine smell filling the house, the clink of my dad's hammer on the metal stand, turning the tree in endless circles while we all voted on which was the best side to face out, getting sap on my hands when shoving the lights as deep in between the branches as my arms would allow. The Christmas memories that stand out over the others are the times we picked out our tree from the rows of perfectly conical evergreens at a nearby choose and cut farm in Indiana. This magical place was as much Christmas to me as the North Pole--all that was missing was Santa and his reindeer. Even then I knew I wanted a Christmas tree farm.

Jamie and I had talked about it before, but it was still just sharing dreams. It was in the same category as let's live in Belize when we retire. All our moves over the years left a longing in our hearts for roots. The longing grew stronger with every move. That's when we decided it was time to get serious about our dream. We looked at several different properties and none of them was just right. It was close to Christmas so we put our farm search on the back burner for the holidays. On our long drive home from North Carolina we started looking at properties on our cell phones. We had purposely not been looking at Williamson County simply because we knew we couldn't afford the amount of land we would need, but we were running out of options. I looked at Jamie while he was driving and said, "It couldn't hurt to look."

We entered our search criteria and there it was. It was in our price range, so of course our first thought was, "What's wrong with it?" The pictures showed cleared pasture land with gentle rolling hills and a small creek, and then we saw the deal breaker. The property bordered Tennessee's Interstate 840, the seventy seven mile partial loop around Nashville. This would deter most, but not a family looking to plant Christmas trees. We had wanted visibility from the road for free advertisement, and our time as urban dwellers in downtown Nashville prepared us for the road noise. It would be a familiar sound machine lulling us to sleep at night. The property was made for us. The exit off 840 is even named Pinewood Road. How perfect for a Christmas tree farm! We bought it. We sold our house, packed up the kids, and moved to the country.

Pinewood Christmas Tree Farm is no longer a dream; it's reality. The 2020 Christmas season for 500 families--maybe one of them is yours--begins next week when we plant our inaugural crop. To all those 500 families in the year 2020: thank you for letting us be such a special part of your holiday. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Blessings

We've been busy. Busy preparing for Christmas. If you read the part 4 post of Mia's adoption story, you can see how chaotic our Christmas was last year. We were living in an apartment for two months waiting for our house to be built, so there really wasn't a lot of unpacking, and we came home on Christmas Eve with a two day old baby. On Christmas Eve we were up with the baby and last minute preparations until about four in the morning. We laid down for our fabled long winter's nap promised to us by the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and Maddox woke up to see that Santa had come at 4:15 a.m. Jamie stayed up to watch Maddox open his presents. I tried, but slept through most of it. I remember hearing 'look Mom' a few times, but no visual memories. Later that day I was flipping through Facebook and saw some pictures of presents being opened by my child for the first time. Our Facebook friends got a first glimpse at my Christmas morning before I did. 

We were very grateful for our beautiful and tiny Christmas miracle, and we wouldn't change any of it. However all the chaos of it increased our holiday appetites for 2013. We've been celebrating Christmas since October. It started with my Christmas wreaths. I took them to a craft show and have sold all but three which I may just keep for myself.

As soon as we got home from visiting family for Thanksgiving, we bought our tree. We wanted to get one sooner, but made ourselves wait. Jamie and I get impulsive when we are excited, but we were able to reign it in a bit and only got the 11 footer--we had our eyes on the 12. Our backs are very glad we didn't go bigger. We carried it in ourselves--just the two of us. Well, rolled it in, I suppose. Anyway, we got it in. Jamie had put the stand on before we got it inside and we would tweak it for balance once we got the monstrosity upright. When we picked it up, it was perfectly straight, no tweaking required. Another Christmas miracle.

Funny. It doesn't look as big on top of our car.

(Did you check for squirrels, Clark?)

Maddox was able to put the star on top with a little help from Daddy and a ladder.

Maddox and I decorated a Gingerbread village and Made Minecraft shaped sugar cookies for our neighbors. 

It's been Christmas non-stop around our house. And with one week left, it will only get more Christmas-y-er. Yes, that's a real word. I just made it up. Mia's first birthday party is coming up and so is Christmas with my side of the family, then Santa will come and bring more toys, Christmas with Jamie's side of the family, and Maddox's birthday won't be long after that. With the present overload and all the joyful chaos of the holidays I worried that my children would miss the true meaning of Christmas. I thought that when February rolls around and there are no more back-to-back birthdays and holidays involving presents they would become spoiled and not know what it means to plan and save up and work for things. I thought they would expect everything they want when they want it. I had too little faith in them. Maddox had to remind me, as he often does. 

We were sitting waiting for Daddy's Christmas concert to start and sharing jelly beans. Maddox handed me an orange one and I said no thank you and asked if I could have a red one. He shook his head at me and told me to just enjoy what I have. 

Both kids have been sick off and on for about a month now. Maddox's most recent affliction was a nasty double ear infection. We tried the good tasting antibiotic with no results. He had to take the yucky white stuff. I don't know what it tastes like, but my son loves to take medicine to the point that I'm a little worried about it. With the white stuff though...he runs and hides. We told him if he could be good and take his medicine without argument for all ten days he could open a present from mommy and daddy the day he takes his last dose. He did it. He worked hard at keeping a good attitude and struggled through two doses a day. He earned his present. 

When he opened the long awaited present, I didn't see the reaction I expected. He is all about Minecraft lately, and I got him a Minecraft play set. He studied it calmly. He was happy, but not jumping up and down as I'd hoped. While we were putting it together I asked him a few times if he liked it and if that was what he wanted. He answered a simple yes every time. After I had asked if he wanted more he said, "I'm trying to just enjoy what I have." 

When it was about candy, I thought it was a cute response. He was just repeating something I'd told him before, but the second time I saw that he truly gets it, maybe more than I do. He gets the true meaning of Christmas. It's not about presents. It's about enjoying what you have and the people you share it with. That's one smart kid.