The cast of characters

Since I'm going to be talking about my family in many of my blog posts, I thought it would be expedient to introduce everyone that lives here.

My wife, Anne, and I have been married for over eighteen years. She's a great blessing in my life for which I am very thankful. God has blessed us with four wonderful children. They have all been born at home, the last two here on the homestead. Jessica will be 12 in January. She loves horses and has a great interest in drawing. She has quite a few drawing books she spends time with working on her drawing skills. She also loves to read. She does a lot to help with the jobs and chores around the house and in the garden. I hope to acquire a horse for her benefit sometime within the next two years. I think it would be good for her. She has ridden Josey, our cow, but only when I was leading Josey. Besides, that's not quite the same.

Our middle children are our boys. The older is Ramiah. He's 7-1/2 years old. He has a lot of creative ideas and loves machinery and tools. He loves to build things when he has the opportunity. Malchiah is our third child. He just turned five in November. He is energetic, generous, and loves to have fun. He's been my helper since he was just a little guy, and he still loves to be with me doing chores or when I'm out working. If the work involves using a tractor or other machinery, Ramiah also clamors to be with me. It's really something watching these boys grow into young men. I pray that I can guide them as they need.

Our youngest is Naomi Shalom. She'll be three in March. She's a curly-headed little darling, cute as can be and knows it. She's almost always happy and spoils me rotten. She too wants to go do chores with daddy. If she doesn't get to go she is mightily disappointed. She loves to help around the house.

Anne, my beautiful wife, does so much to keep us going. She takes good care of me and our children. She oversees most of the food preservation. In fact, she canned nearly a thousand quarts of food this last summer and fall. In previous years we froze a lot of the food we harvested, but this year we tried canning most of it. Next year we intend to dry as much as possible. She's also the one who does the bulk of the homeschooling of our children. She does so much, and I appreciate her greatly. She has quite a knack at finding good deals at thrift shops and on Ebay.

I'm Darryl. I do a lot of different things around here. I take care of the animals, which right now consists of a cow and her calf and half a dozen turkeys. We have had goats and chickens until this last summer, and we'll probably have more again in another year or so. I'm building our house, a timber frame with strawbale walls. You can read about that project in my other blog, Cedar Ridge Farm. I mow, rake, and bale our own hay and cut firewood among other things. My income generating job is teaching an online class for Illinois State University. It doesn't produce much income, but it is enough to pay bills and allow me to be at home to do my real job. I'm blessed with this opportunity because of the 26 years I spent in school from Kindergarten through my Ph.D.
My parents, Garry and Connie, live about 200 feet from our house on the farm. When we bought the property, there was an unfinished, one-bedroom cabin the previous own had started. It was enclosed and had electricity, but that was about it. We mentioned to my parents that this was for them, and dad grabbed ahold of that idea like a bulldog on a bone. They moved down here from Illinois the spring after we moved, rented a house in town, and remodeled and finished their house. It's a blessing having them here. Dad helps me with many different jobs that I need help with with, like baling hay and working on our house. You can probably read about some of them on his blog. I help him as I can, too. Mom does her best to spoil our children, and they encourage her in that endeavor, I'm afraid.

A friend of mine from college, Danny D. Smith, also lives here. Danny and I met and became friends in 1987 when we both worked in the kitchen at Ambassador College in Pasadena, California. We kept in contact after we both graduated. After we moved here, he sold his home in the Raleigh, NC, area and moved her in the spring of 2004. He bought a small double-wide mobile home and put it across the driveway from our home. He takes care of his mom who lives with him. Our children love Uncle Danny. You'll often find one of the boys or Naomi (or all three) with him, using his tools or trying to "help" him. He enjoys our children and is very generous with them.

How we came to live in Kentucky

Our homesteading adventure began in the spring of 2003. We had been looking for properties for several months while working our plan to pay off debts and pay down on the house we were buying in Bloomington, Illinois. I was working for the university there teaching graduate-level qualitative research classes. We desired to live in the country and to homestead. We planned a trip for the beginning of spring break in order to look at some properties in South-Central Kentucky. I'd found some interesting properties listed online by a realtor in Burkesville, KY. We made arrangements to view some of their listed properties on the Monday of spring break in March.

On Friday, prior to leaving for our short trip to Kentucky, I found another 54.5 acre property listed by another realtor in the area. I called to talk to the listing agent about the property, mentioning that we were going to be in the area at the beginning of the week and if we had time we might be interested in seeing the property.

We made our trip, and on that Monday morning, we looked at three properties. Two of them were not acceptable and one held promise with some limitations. When we went back to our rented house, I called the other realtor. He was sitting by the phone waiting for me to call. We made arrangements to meet him at his office and to see the property that afternoon.

After meeting him, we followed his vehicle along the curvy ridge roads to the place, about six miles outside of town. The entry to the property wasn't too promising, consisting of a 24' x 40' garage with a dirt floor and a 1972 vintage mobile home. I was hoping to look at the mobile home last because I anticipated the reaction of my wife, Anne, to it. But, Ramiah, our son who was 20 months old at the time, was sleeping. So, in order to not disturb his nap, we looked at the home first. It was dirty and smelled of mothballs. It had the effect I expected it would on Anne, and she was ready to leave. I encouraged her to see the property before making up her mind.

Anne rode in the agent's car down the hill to the bottom land. Down the hill was a tobacco barn in much better shape than the ones we'd seen earlier, although it was quite full of junk. However, there were nice fields, creeks, a small pond, trees on hills, and a nice ridge running through the middle of the bottom. It was secluded, private, and beautiful. It didn't take long to realize that this was the place for us.

We went back to the realtor's office and made an offer of $60,000 for the property. The listed price of $69,000 was out of our price range by a few thousand dollars. The seller counter offered $66,500 that night. We accepted the offer and signed the papers to buy the next day, trying to figure out how we would pay for it since it was still beyond what we had figured on, but trusting what we felt was God's lead in the matter. We spent a couple hours that day walking around the place before heading back to Illinois. We were excited, to say the least.

After we got home, we spent the next week getting our house in Bloomington ready to sell. We did some painting and cleaning. The next week I placed a For Sale by Owner ad in the newspaper and a sign in the front yard. By the end of that week, we had a buyer. Then, the buyer backed out, but God provided another buyer immediately. We were not attempting to make a big profit on the house, just to get our equity out of it (we'd payed a lot extra on the principle during the four years we lived there). We actually took a small loss on the sale, but we sold it quickly, and it was a blessing to the new buyers.

One of the complications we had was the usual escrow times in each place. In Kentucky, escrow usually takes 30 days. In Illinois, the common time is 60 days. We were able to set the closing on the Kentucky property for May 1, a 45 day escrow. We had to rush the escrow period in Illinois to make it 30 days, closing on April 30.

We packed and moved our things into storage in preparation for the closing date on our sale in Bloomington. The semester didn't end until May 15, and we couldn't move before then. My parents were gracious enough to let us live with them for two weeks after our house sold and before we moved.

On April 30, we signed our names dozens of times and concluded the sale of our house. We took a certified cashiers check from the sale and another one from what we had saved in the amount required for buying the property in Kentucky, and we drove overnight in order to be at the realtors first thing in the morning. So, we were technically homeless for only a few hours. We spent two days at our new property, cleaning the mobile home in order to make it fit for moving in to in two weeks. We slept in our van during that time rather than in the home.

We made the move on May 16, 2003. We rented a large moving van and drove it loaded with our possessions. My brother Mark drove his truck pulling my trailer with my 1950 John Deere MT on it (this tractor was bought new by my grandfather). My dad drove our newly acquired 1987 Ford F350 crew cab in our small caravan. Dad and Mark stayed for a couple days to help us move in and begin to get settled. Then, they headed back to Illinois, and we were on our own on our new homestead.

Sabbath

It's the seventh day of the week, commonly known as Saturday. According to the Bible, which is quite clear, that's the Sabbath. God set aside the seventh day at creation. My family and I seek to honor the seventh day as the Sabbath by setting aside our physical labor and resting. It's God's Sabbath, and He made it for us. It is a blessing. I've encouraged people to set aside one day a week to rest just for the physical and emotional benefits of doing so. I can't imagine working without a weekly rest.

This morning is a beautiful, crisp morning. The temperature was near 20 degrees when I went to do my morning chores (these must be done even on the Sabbath) of milking the cow, feeding her, and feeding the turkeys. Currently, the temperature is rising above freezing. With the clear sky and cold overnight temperatures, there was a nice frost on everything this morning.

I took a photo of the morning from my back porch, looking toward our ridge. It's much nicer in person, of course.

Cedar Ridge Farm -- A brief photo tour

We love our 57 acres of South-Central Kentucky paradise. Enjoy a few photos of our homestead.


Headed down the hill to the bottom, the heart of Cedar Ridge Farm. We garden and raise hay and animals in the bottom. It's also where we are building our new home.


Nearly to the bottom. Our house which is under construction sits above our garden area.


Looking to the right of the previous photo. This is an old tobacco barn in which we currently house our milk cow and her calf.


On the bottom edge of the garden.


Past the garden.


A view from a corner of the property. All that is visible is part of our homestead.


Another view from the field in the foreground in the previous photo.


The hay field behind our ridge.


On the ridge looking toward the garden area and house site.


Trees on the ridge. They're not all cedars.