A lifelong dream fulfilled

People often ask us if buying the farm is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. When we say no, that owning a farm never occurred to us, not even once, not until we saw Four Cedars Farms, they seem surprised.

Early in our relationship, before marriage, before kids, before serious employment, before the house in the suburbs, Jim and I had talked about leaving our hometown and seeking adventure in some exotic destination, far removed our parents, our homes and the traditional path toward the future every one of our friends seemed to be traveling on. We were convinced that if only we could go someplace we’d never been, the adventure of it would eclipse any of the mundane activities we would certainly participate in there, such as studying. For a reason I could never explain, Michigan seemed to fall within the definition of “exotic.” Neither of us had been there, it had good skiing and cherry orchards and three great lakes, all displayed in an attractive brochure; we quickly decided the first place we’d unfold our new life together, this life of adventure, ought to be in Michigan. Never mind that neither of us ski; it was Michigan or bust!

Well, we didn’t get to Michigan until our oldest moved there a few years back. When we look behind us to the path that led us here, we realize we did travel the safe and familiar roads, the paths that gave the children stability and our family economic security. Our life evolved so quickly, we never really revisited the idea of escaping to someplace exotic. (Well, there was that one week in Grand Cayman.)

When we stumbled upon Four Cedars, we were simply looking for a place to get away to on weekends, perhaps to fish, or sit in a lawn chair with a good book. There was nothing outlandish to be said about those goals for a middle-of-the-road middle age. Then, we stumbled upon a farm for sale… .

There was nothing beautiful about this farm when we first laid our eyes upon its grounds and buildings. It was rundown, neglected, in need of the kind of love that turned Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree from a shedding twig into a thick spruce. It needed a handyman like Jim. But from the moment we laid our eyes upon this property, we felt adventure awakening deep within us; it was that feeling we shared in the late 1970s, a feeling we both thought had died decades ago from neglect. It was a desire to take to a world we hadn’t ever seen. To learn from the ground up.

This farm was miles from our hometown and our families and the traditional path on which most of our middle-age friends now travel. It represented an entirely new experience, too, because neither of us had ever before lived anywhere outside the Twin Cities. It would require us to learn, together, and to view each new day from a different perspective, to discover something about each other and something about ourselves. In a way, then, this farm gives us everything that we thought Michigan would so many years ago.

Perhaps you could ask me: Is owning a farm the fulfillment of a lifelong dream? If you asked, I would say, yes.