Nelson County Rocks

We had much to be thankful for at our first Thanksgiving in Virginia: our transition into retirement and a new sort of life has gone amazingly smoothly and we are loving every minute.  And of course we were thankful that Eleanor and Justin came down by train from New York City, and that Nic and Alison came out from Charlottesville.

Wednesday evening I prepared a “local” meal where the key ingredient of each dish came from our garden (fresh or via the freezer): yellow squash pancakes, pesto with spaghetti, three varieties of sunroom-ripened tomatoes, zucchini bread, and a vegetable medley of garden onions, tomatoes, string beans, lima beans, peppers, yellow and green squash, and herbs (click on left picture for a larger view).

On Thanksgiving Day we took “The Plunge” trail to the overlook in the middle picture, as well as driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway and stopping on the way back for a short hike to Crabtree Falls.  At Thanksgiving dinner, all agreed that the Polyface Farm turkey was the tastiest we’d ever had (also less fatty, since it got to run around in its life).

More pictures may be seen by clicking here.

So far we haven’t met a season down here we didn’t like, and fall has been characterized by clear days, nice temperatures, and lovely colors.  The pictures above show our dirt road and our little forest, our house and vegetable garden on the hill, and our storage cottage (formerly a kennel) in the back.  We’ve yet to have a frost, so our spider and other flowers are still in bloom.

While the views and colors at home are pretty spectacular, we’ve taken several rides on and around the Blue Ridge Parkway.  In addition to the pictures above and below, others are available by clicking here.

We closed on the sale of our Cherry Hill house on August 7th, and soon our cars sported handsome plates from our new state (chosen by Monika to match our two cars), as may be seen below:

Almost every evening in Virginia we are treated to a spectacular sunset, but the one that greeted us shortly after our return was particularly so:

Who Could Ask for S’More? A visit from the grandkids and John in the week of July 4th.

Dan rode down with Monika early in the week, and then John drove down with Cally and Sylvia for the 4th of July weekend (Calista had a wedding in Pennsylvania to go to).  Nic and Alison came out several times, so it was our first extended family gathering at our new home.  It was great…and resulted in some new additions to what our friend Barry has called our “resort” (happily without crowds, gift shops, entrance fees, or traffic)–namely a campfire ring and a treehouse.  The campfire ring was Nic’s idea, and after he and Dan constructed it in the afternoon, we tried it out for s’mores in the evening.

The treehouse was Dan’s idea, and in fact he largely built it on his own, with a little help at the beginning from me and later from Nic.  (He’d built one back in New Jersey with friends, so he wasn’t a novice in this.)  This turns out to be a real 21st century treehouse–it comes with wireless internet and Dan spent hours up there instant messaging with friends in Portugal!

Once everyone had arrived, we had dinner on the deck and a second s’more campfire.  On July 4th we went up to the Blue Ridge Parkway for a picnic and some short walks.  More pictures about each of these activities may be seen by clicking here.

We settled on our new home on April 17th, 2009, and were greeted by a very different view from what we first saw in February.  We’ve come to realize as the season has progressed how beautifully landscaped our property is, and how it constantly changes.

Although Monika and I both enjoyed teaching at the Camden campus of Rutgers University and appreciated the wonderful colleagues we had there, in the past several years we felt ourselves increasingly alienated form the sprawl, congestion, mindless consumerism, and general ugliness that surrounded us in South Jersey.  For me, thoughts of an alternative were spurred by a study I did for the Rand Institute on agritourism  (pretty much anything that connects farmers directly with the general public)  in South Jersey, a project that also landed me a seat on the New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture’s Agritourism Council.   For both of us, visiting farms and talking to farmers harked back to summers spent in farm country growing up, in Bavaria and Vermont respectively.

And so….we find ourselves now in retirement with a five-acre property in Virginia, on Blue Rock Lane in Roseland, Nelson County.  We love our new life, and this blog is intended partly as a record for ourselves and our family, and also as a way of sharing our new life with friends, former students, and anyone else who may be interested.