"Virginia is for Lykoshes"

Perhaps one of the best-kept secrets of the internet. (Not really. But I really do enjoy it.)

Our daughter Amy and her husband woke up one morning a couple of years ago and both said they had a dream--the same dream: They believed they should start a farm.

Now, of all our kids, Amy had always been the most . . . ummmm . . . literate, . . . or highbrow . . . or into books and art and music and all the finer things of cultured, urban life. She and Phil are the ones who made a point of going to Italy to visit all the cultural sites. She is the one who did all the research to enable our family to pack in as much cultural wealth as we could on a visit to Florence, Italy, in November 2007. She is the one who professes (or professed) a love for opera and such things.

And now, all of a sudden, she said, she wanted to give it all up and homestead a farm. Find some bare land somewhere and live off the land . . . and, if possible, off the grid. I.e., beholden to no one, disconnected from all the trappings of modern life.

Something like that.

Well, it took a couple of years. She and Phil did a lot of research. They took the time, at least, to try their hand at gardening while they still had a "regular" suburban home in Boulder, Colorado.

But back in the late summer/early fall of 2008, they took a trip across the country and looked at a number of potential areas in which to find their Shangri-La. Eventually they settled on a plot of close to 40 acres in north-central Virginia--about 20 miles south of Charlottesville, officially in a town called Esmont, but, if you look on Google Maps, halfway between Megan's Meadows and Turkey Run.


View Larger Map

Amy started a blog that recounts their adventures--and misadventures--beginning last July when they first moved to their undeveloped property.

It's been non-stop excitement ever since.

Want to read a modern-day Little House on the Prairie-style story? Go to Virginia is for Lykoshes. You will not be disappointed.

I have few doubts that one day what you read and see there (yes, there are photos!) will become a book most definitely worth reading. But you can read it in raw form today at no charge!

Enjoy!