In the days and weeks to follow I am going to attempt to
document the hybrid life that we have developed on our 55 acres in Holmes County, Ohio. Mostly I am attempting this to document the last 20 years and the next 20, should I be so fortunate. This “blog”, if that’s what it is, is for my children, my wife and any future descendants who may want to know more about this place and time. I apologize in advance for grammatical errors and misspelled words, I will do my best, but I don’t have the patience to check and proof. I am not a writer, I am an artist, and I think creatively and write the same way.

I have determined that today will be the beginning of the
end or let’s say the conclusion of this experiment that began 20 years ago, when my wife, Georgia and I, with a family in it’s early stages decided that Living in Boston, Massachusetts, away from family and headed for “Yup Dum”wanted more than 12 hour work days loaded with stress and ending exhausted on the couch with a beer in hand and a sitcom on the tube. That was when we decided a “simpler life” with different priorities and more control was where we needed to head.

Safety pin holding glasses together......NICE!

Frayed collar on worn out NPR tee-shirt

Selfie, Boxing day 2015.

More on Sunday but now I am heading to the barn to continue preparing my work shop for the upcoming maple season and equipment repair work to be done.

December 26, 2015

December 27, 2015

Yesterday after working in the shop I went over to the garden to inspect what remains. December has almost descended into history and we continue to harvest from the garden. Fall Broccoli, cabbage and parsley provide fresh vegetables for the table and fodder for the chickens. It's a wee bit concerning but cold approaches. When my eldest daughter was young and Georgia and I would talk about strange weather she would ask, "Is this something I should worry about?" We would say no honey, it's fine.........she worried all the same!

Broccoli,Garden, December 27th, 2015

Anastasia, Rhode Island, September 13th, 2001

December 29, 2015

December 26, 2015

Christmas eve, my mother and father, Donald and Betty came to spend the night and Christmas morning with our family. Mom had been going through some boxes in the attic and found a Times reporter newspaper from the 50's that focused on the Cheese industry in this part of Ohio.

My grandfather , Joe Rohrer, came to this country from Switzerland at the young age of 25, he was a cheese maker. Fast forward to my youth in  the early seventies when I make trips to the "country" with my grandparents riding in a lawn chair perched between their seats in a Ford Econoline van, avocado green I might add......Sweet. We would come to Holmes county, pick up eggs at the Farmerstown auction on Tuesday morning ( I would get a 25¢ bottle of Coke from the machine) then on to the cheese house to pick up blocks of cheese to be sold at their small store in East Canton, Ohio.

This experience cemented my love of the "country" and 30 years later we bought our farm just a short drive from the Farmerstown auction which continues to operate every Tuesday!