THE FARM
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We have landed ourselves in Bushy Fork, NC, also known as Hurdle Mills. The land out here is beautiful with slightly rolling hills and low ridges on the horizon lines. There are farms everywhere around us, with most people growing tobacco, corn, or soybeans. Our farm is 30 acres, fit with a 3/4 acre pond, a spring,and a winding creek that travels down the south side of our property and winds around the east end. There are around 15 cleared acres, perfect for crop use, and around 15 acres in hardwood. We immediately felt an affinity for the property on our first visit; we hadn't even walked the whole property and we were both brimming with the excitement of new love. There are six separate fields, each with loads of character as well as slightly different soils and micro-climates. The soil alone is reason enough to want to farm here. Our land had been in pasture for around fifty years before we stumbled upon it--just in the past few years the fellow we bought it from had been growing hay, but nothing to deplete the soil of too many nutrients. In some places on the property there is black topsoil four to five inches deep that would make any farmer's mouth water. For the most part, the soil is a fairly heavy sandy loam about 8 inches to a foot deep, and then you hit clay. All of the fields except the huge front field have windbreaks surrounding them in the form of cedars and hardwoods.

We will use our pond for irrigation. The pond is located in our front field in an excellent drainage location. Last fall, 2007, after months of severe drought, the pond was a couple feet low. We went away on our honeymoon the week of Oct. 21-28, and while we were gone it rained five inches and miraculously our pond filled back up. We plan to put water purifying plants in the area where rain run off enters our pond. And of course water lilies and lotus flowers in the pond itself. We probably won't get to that this year with all our other big plans. All in all we feel blessed to have found such a great farm location. It is strange to call it 'our' farm and 'our' land, seeing as how this land has always been here and always will be here, with or without us. But we do hope to maintain and preserve its beauty as best we can.