April Fool’s Day 2013.

After all we’d been through to break ground on Lee-Hall Farm, I was going to do more than “take names” if we didn’t get to break ground on our second attempt.  April 1st is my little sister’s birthday.  Peggy’s her name and throughout her young life we played jokes on her and the April Fool’s Birthday jokes we played on her were seldom nice.  One year, when she was very young, we had her convinced she was not real, she was an April Fool’s joke and because she would not be here on April 2nd, she’d best enjoy the day to the hilts.  She was the baby, not just the last born, but a cry baby to boot.  We so deeply convinced her that she was an April Fool’s joke that she wailed so which drove us all to pleading with her hush up and our not following through with the joke.  Miserably for us, it was harder to convince her that she being a joke was the joke.

Anyway, I was worried all the April Fool’s jokes would catch up with me on dig day and ground would not really be broken.  However, I stood in favor (or maybe it was John) and the first dirt was lifted from one place and set in another.  Oh Happy Day!

It was a very interesting experience.  It had been explained to us that because the ground was still soft in areas giving access to the dig location, out of the ordinary equipment would be necessary for our foundation.  And of course, the $7,000 driveway also had been necessary.  The cement trucks’ weight could not be withstood by all areas of the foundation hence a pump truck would be needed.

It was educational and quite fun to watch the process and of course, it was exciting as all get out!  We have been so fortunate throughout the process of having the best subs handling different aspects of the building process.  John and Sharon have been taking pictures to share with others, especially with family and friends in other locations from us.  John and Sharon have been particularly kind with our feminine audience by providing pictures to drool over enjoy of long, dark lush lashes, bulging biceps and 6-pack abs.  They’ve all seemed quite satisfied and grateful.

I love dirt!  I especially love dirt being moved from one place to another so that our future home can get underway.

May God bless this home and my this home know how much it is wanted and is loved!

Nearly every post on Lee-Hall Farm could begin, “The long awaited ___________.”, this post is no exception.

The long awaited driveway, long awaited because it would lead to the future garage and house and it would mean something, anything, any action at all was beginning.  After a very rainy start to 2013, the driveway was finally being cut.  Since January 1st there had not been 10 days in row without rain; there hardly had been 7.  I believe the water numbers were 12″ of rain by the end of February and 4″ of rain or snow during the first 10 days of March.  The water resulted in every thing relating to the house being “long awaited.”

March 11th arrived as did equipment for cutting our new driveway.  The existing driveway would be used until just before the existing garage.  Just before the existing garage, the driveway would make a slight left turn to head toward mid-field, about 3/4 of the way toward the back of our lot, to where our new garage and new house were to be dug.

John and I never thought we’d find the digging of a driveway so exciting, but we did because it was ours and because it was like a long overdue birth.  It also came with a cost.  Due to the exceptionally wet January – early March, the driveway had to be reinforced to enable the heavy trucks, especially the cement trucks, to get to the building site.

Daniel, the excavator who cut the driveway as well as dug the foundation, was amazingly skilled.  The excavator was like an arm and a hand under his direction.  Six truckloads later of #3 rock, several truckloads of crushed asphalt and several thousand dollars, we had ourselves a driveway.  At long last!  It felt like we had our very own yellow brick road.

We had purchased a lovely bottle of champagne to cork when we broke ground.  The driveway now laid on the land and the champagne bottle still laid in wait.

After four long months, creation work began on our future home.  It began with unearthing the driveway on March 11, 2013.  It was an overcast day on the outside, but inside John’s and my hearts and minds it was a bright and glorious day.  Anticipation wasn’t over, but it was at long last on its way to reaching its end.

I don’t know how long the farmland has existed and to my knowledge it never had a name.  The farmland has now been named because I have returned to make it my last dwelling place – hopefully – after having been away for just over 31 years. I named it Lee-Hall Farm to honor my parents.  Lee is a shortened version of my father’s first name and Hall is my mother’s maiden name.

My parents moved my four siblings and me to the farmland in 1964.  I can’t remember the month, but it likely was a summer month, maybe late June after school began its summer break.  When we moved there, it was a ~6 acre plot of farmland on Georgetown Road, a couple miles south of Hanover Courthouse.  It had few trees and was flat as could be.

Prior to the move to Georgetown Road my family had rented and lived on a very large farm known as Plum Tree Farm off Cold Harbor Road in Mechanicsville, VA.  Plum Tree Farm was a sprawling farm with twin ponds separated by a dam.  We had all sorts of farm animals.  I believe our horses were our favorite of the animals along with one pig named White Boy.  We were all saddened to leave Plum Tree Farm, but were anxious to have a home we owned rather than rented.  We took three horses with us to Georgetown Road and some chickens, but soon sold them as trails and other riding areas were nonexistent in comparison to Plum Tree Farm and because the land was not conducive to chicken farming.

After selling the animals, the land at Georgetown Road was purely produce farmed.  Our crops included tomatoes, peppers, corn, watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, okra, squash, many varieties of beans, potatoes, yams, onions, cabbage, lettuce, winter greens and more.  My father also planted a small fruit orchard and grew grapes and berries.  In my youth, I never fully realized or appreciated the luxury of being bathed in abundant fresh produce.  Because I am a former farm girl, I love fresh produce and am somewhat snobbish about quality.

I left the farmland at Georgetown Road in 1981 when I married.  One of my sisters inherited the farmland from my mother upon her death in 1998.  With my husband’s death and my sister needing to sell the land, I purchased the farmland in 2010 and have returned to Georgetown Road to make it my new home, a home I will share with my sister and with my new companion, John.  Without John’s help, I would not have been able to return in the manner of my wishes.  John has provided both moral and financial support as well as has shared my hope for building a retirement home that will accommodate our ever changing physical needs as we advance in years.  He now co-owns Lee-Hall Farm with me.

John and I intend to journal the changes made to Lee-Hall Farm from the laying of a new driveway, to the construction of our dream retirement home, to the changes to its landscape.  I look forward to becoming a farm old lady, my updated version of farm girl, and to teaching John about farm life.  He, however, looks forward to brewing craft beer and enjoying the night’s black rural sky.  Our progress can be followed here at leehallfarm.com.

Sign commissioned for Lee-Hall Farm from Danthonia Designs, Australia (www.danthoniadesigns.com/)

It was a cold morning in January that had been anticipated for months on end.  January 23, 2013 was to be our dig day.  Mist exited our mouths not simply because our breath was warmer than the outside air, it exited because it was burning with excitement.  We were about to birth a house!

We were to meet our builder on the land at 8:30 that Monday morning.  Upon our prompt arrival, we were delighted to see that all initially integral parties were already there.  John was about to experience his second “Big Dig” (he’s from Massachusetts – the Big Dig), I my first.

With all the rain that had fallen from the sky since the start of the New Year, the dig did not happen.  It was more the Big Sink, literally.  The excavator sunk so far into the mud that instead of digging with the front arm shovel, it was used to push and lift the excavator from the sinkhole in which it found itself.

John and I were too despondent to stay until the excavator was reloaded onto the flatbed and driven away to await some future Big Dig in March.

The land, oh the land of my siblings and my youth and now Sharon’s, John’s and my elder years.

The land was my father’s pride and joy, it was his kingdom.  I never understood that, had no idea whatsoever of its meaning until I knew it through my husband.  I fully understood what the home my husband and I shared meant to him.  A man is a provider.  The place that gets under a man’s skin and into his heart, the place he truly knows as home for his family, is his castle.  In my father’s case, his castle came with a bit of land he could nourish and farm and could pass along to his children.

It is good to be back on the land of my parents.  I am older and as a result, I of course have a greater appreciation for my father’s and my mother’s work off the land which enabled us to have it and on the land which enabled it to provide for us.  In turn, I have a greater appreciation for the provisions the land made for my family and me.  We were well fed, well exercised, well played and well sheltered.  It even served as a springboard to two marriages, my little sister’s and mine as we held our wedding receptions on the land.

I am so anxious to garden again, to have John enjoy the infamous Hanover Tomatoes that not only have I raved about to him for years, but have been documented in books by none other than Dr. Kay Scarpetta (as authored by Patricia Cornwell).  I am anxious to plant fruit trees.  I am anxious to landscape.  I am anxious for John to have an observatory.  I am anxious for my sister, Sharon, to again feel the pride and stewardship she felt when the land came to her after our mother’s death.  I am anxious for John and me to be its modern day stewards and to keep it in Anderton lineage ownership for as long as is possible.