This time of the year . . . .

Bill says the snow needs to be gone from in front of the house.  What's left in the fields needs to dissipate down to just a few patches.  The wet can stay the way it's been.

If all that happens by tomorrow, Bill figures the place will look pretty much the way it did when we first walked it five years ago.  We learned about its availability in late February or early March, 2006.    

That was almost at the end of the real estate bubble.  So, it was high-priced like everything around this area.  How many remember the empty city lots in town selling for minimum $100,000?  Actually selling (as opposed to sitting), almost before they went on the market, no less?

Well, we learned about the Lovestead before it went on the market.  Bill was in a meeting with the previous owner, who had just learned he was being transferred.  

Bill walked up to him and said, "You have a farm, don't you?"

"Yes," he said.

"Where is it?" Bill asked.

"Selle," he said.

"Let's go look at pictures (aerial shots)," Bill said.  

That night Bill brought home an aerial photo and told me to go look at this place.  

"I know that place," I said to him. "Have always loved it."

Much happened in a short time, and, for the one time in our lives, the stars lined up, perfectly and quickly.  

So, the end of March or early April, we paid an official potential buyers' visit to this place.  We wore boots, and they were needed down in the woods and while walking through the hayfield where there's a swale.  

As we walked down a rather wet lane, I thought to myself that this lane may need to be built up a bit.  That was one of the first projects---with Perry Palmer's expertise---once we took possession in July.  

Later, after that very first visit, I used up a lot of gas, driving by the place, always lamenting that those trees along the road hid too much of it and that the drive by at a normal (not snooping) speed was much too fast to see anything.

Lots of water has gone under the bridge and into the ground since that day five years ago, and, yes, Mary Taylor was right when she told me the place had a high water table.  We've seen and slogged through the evidence more than we care to do over the past couple of years.

And, we'll keep on slogging through slop for who knows how long this year.  

Every future year at this time of the year, we'll probably listen to the birds chirping happily, walk through the wet fields,  almost empty of snow, enjoy a dry walk down that lane that Perry Palmer built up for us  and rejoice in the fact that we hit the lifetime lottery big time when we learned about this place. 

Rain and all!