We like so many others on this site are dreaming of owning land some day.  We owned land at one point, back in 1995, before we moved from OK to TN to follow my job.  From there we moved to MO, again for my job, and now we're at a point where we all want to get back to the land after having lived in suburbia for 17 years. 

We didn't own alot of land - 5 acres with access to the adjoining 5 since my inlaws owned it.  But we loved it and had made a nice homestead of it - built a pole barn, a chicken coop, fenced it all, had two large gardens - one I kept for fall and one for spring - over 50 fruit and nut trees, blackberry, raspberry, boysenberry and blueberries and also 9 grape vines.  We participated in the farmer's market.  We raised a pig and several batches of chickens, had geese and ducks.  We had 3 horses.  Also, we completely remodeled our home and made it large enough that my husband's mom could move in with us after his father died.  Now, 26years later, she is still living with us which is a tremendous blessing and is 96 years young! 

Anyway, back to the title of my blog...this weekend we put some time in applying netting to our ripening blackberry bushes.  As were were doing it, I told my husband, "see we are still farmers, we still know how to do farm stuff! "   Not sure why we picked one of the hottest, humid days to do it, but we did.  And when you are a farmer, you do it regardless of the weather right?  The berries looked very nice and we hope we get every single blackberry off of them.  After all, I feed the birds and water them so I want them to respect our berries...yeah, right. 

We have 18 okra plants growing in my back flower bed and 3 peppers and 6 tomatoes.  Every year, it seems as though more beds become gardening beds and fewer become flower beds. 

We hope this is the last year in the suburbs for us.  We want to get back to the country.  I'll explain more about that in my next blog.