The Land - Part 1 - Purchasing the farm (June 2011)

I have gotten quite behind on posting photos from our recent adventures - in large part because of what I'm showing you now - our land, part of the Devil's Coulee region (in the Bluffs region of eastern Minnesota), which we've been working on almost daily for months in between our other jobs and commitments. There is something incredibly zen and amazing about working on the land, physical labor, surrounded by birdsong, biting bugs, and sunlight dappled through the forest trees - it's made time flow by in such a fashion I'm not altogether sure where the last few months have gone.

I will share some of our first photos from our land, mostly taken last December and early this year. I will continue in another post with adventures of trout, chainsaws, giant gardens, and deer skulls.

The old barn before we cleared the trees around (which were all overgrown, weedy box elders which made me feel a little less bad about cutting them)



My apologies if you've seen these photos from before, but here are a few pictures of old cars nested on the property before we removed them.

There were mostly VWs, including two vans.

I was told this was a 57 Bel Air. It completely fell apart when it was moved, it was upside down and a tree had fallen on it, reducing it to an amazing pile of rusty pieces.

Mossy fallen structure.

Inside the old barn.

Barn ceiling.

There were old signs of beavers wandering through, though no signs of any current habitation.

The bluffs on each side of our main valley are over 200 ft high and very steep.

A panorama of the main building site area up on the first level of bluffs.

To the right here is an open 10 acre field along the private, dead end road cutting through part of the property.

This tree near the driveway is one of the largest we've found so far - it is an oak, at least 9 or 10 ft in diameter.

Small old storage sheds, not sure what their original purposes were.

We have a lot of these interesting 'sister' trees on the property - I am not sure what type they are but they are beautiful and many intertwine in really interesting fashion. I look forward to getting to know all of our trees as the years go by, and planting many more!

This is all that is left of the old house that burned down. There is an old marking inscribed on it that says 1916. It's really too bad that it's gone, but we're planning to use the old foundation to build a root cellar.

Another view of the barn and bluffs behind it before we cleared the falling trees.

A taste of the car graveyard before we hauled them all away.

The old barn, before clearing and cleaning. We pulled out 16 vehicles and a massive dumpster full of scrap metal - old appliances, metal barrels, all sorts of broken farm equimpent, and many odds and ends of dubious background.

The constantly changing sky over the bluffs is usually dotted with bald eagles, red tail hawks, turkey vultures and crows - I love it!

One of the small hidden fields nestled in the woods.

Bluffs overlooking the future aviary/bird building and orchard area.

Part of the stream, we have about 3/4 of a mile of it meandering through the parcel.

Two people walking near the stream for scale - this is actually part of the stream that really needs rehab - corn was being cropped up to the edge and you can see how bad the erosion is. We've pulled the field out of production, planted native grasses on it and will have to grade it down to the river to prevent further damage in the future. We really need a Bobcat!

Another part of the stream.

A smaller stream which connects to the main one further down.

I'll leave on that note with the winter photos and continue on again later with some from this spring. :)