My Piece of Planet Earth

Ariel photo taken spring of 2021 by my niece's fiance who is a pilot and owns his own single engine hobby airplane.  I was not going to post this but then I figured maybe folks might find it interesting.  My little island, my little speck of planet Earth.  Some of the land I own I rent out for cropping.  Unfortunate because everything farmers plant around me are disgusting, vile, high chem GMO crops.  Yuck.  Anyway, this little speck of land is my permie bubble.  90 percent of the food I consume is produced by me or within a five mile radius of me by people I know and trust.  I only shop for the basic stuff.  My annual retail grocery bill is around $500.  The relatively small amount of space I allocate for vegetable gardening annually feeds three to four families beyond my needs.  This should give an indication of how much the land can actually provide when done smartly and responsibly.  The land also annually provides the firewood I need for home heating, maple syrup making, and meat smoking.

This land was owned by my great grandfather who purchased it in the 1880s from the original settler who broke the prairie.  It has been passed down to me.  It appears that I will be the last in my family who will own it as nobody else in the family has an interest.  Just the way things go.

There are many trees, shrubs, and flowers that still exist on site that were originally planted by my grandparents and parents.  I have kept with the tradition to make the place my own.  Every year I tap the maple trees for maple syrup, trees that were planted by my grandfather, father, and myself.  It is pretty cool tapping trees that were planted by three generations of my family, seedlings planted from the 1930s up through the 1990s.  

I harvest walnuts annually from the black walnut trees my grandfather planted in the 1930s.  I always have people coming up and invading my privacy wanting to pay me to log off those walnut trees and I just laugh at them and chase them away.

Ultimately it is just land, but the connections to and the memories of my past make this small rectangular patch of dirt priceless to me.

If you reside in southern Minnesota, eastern South Dakota, or northwestern Iowa and want to take a tour of the place in summertime then contact me.  I would be happy to give a tour and perhaps cook a dinner over the firepit with some pleasant evening conversation.  I would really enjoy that.  I am also looking for prospective future owners, otherwise I know for a fact that upon my demise this land will be purchased, bulldozed, and plowed under for GMO cash cropping.

Hi Tom,
What a wonderful oasis you are looking after there! A picture paints a thousand words indeed. I hope you can find a worthy custodian.

Great job making a haven despite your surroundings Tom!  It kinda sounds like you might be an Otis...  All about PEP/SKIP

Nancy Reading wrote:Hi Tom,
What a wonderful oasis you are looking after there! A picture paints a thousand words indeed. I hope you can find a worthy custodian.

As each year passes that is quickly becoming my number one goal in my life.  I also need a steward of my seed collection, hopefully one and the same. :-)

Mike Haasl wrote:Great job making a haven despite your surroundings Tom!  It kinda sounds like you might be an Otis...  All about PEP/SKIP

Thank you for the heads up, really exciting to me and I will look into it.  I do not care about the money I just do not want the place bulldozed.  It has far more potential than just money, almost turnkey for the right owners.

Thanks for posting.

Hi Tom,
My family's farm was in Northwest Iowa, it was in our family from 1881 to 2002. It's a really lovely part of planet earth. I hope you can find someone to love your land. My dad, the youngest son, was so depressed when his older brother sold off the farm because none of his kids were interested in farming.

Beautiful, Tom! I hope you find the right person to care for your heritage when the day comes that you no longer can.

Melissa Ferrin wrote:Hi Tom,
My family's farm was in Northwest Iowa, it was in our family from 1881 to 2002. It's a really lovely part of planet earth. I hope you can find someone to love your land. My dad, the youngest son, was so depressed when his older brother sold off the farm because none of his kids were interested in farming.

I think I can understand how your father felt...

Metaphorically speaking, I can feel the presence of my ancestors and hear their voices in the wind when I am out and about on the place, and it comforts me.  I get to walk where they walked, sit where they once sat, use tools that they used.  I get to think about my grandmother when I use her old garden hoe, worn round from the thousands of hours of nearly a century of use, while working the same soil she once worked.  My goodness that woman worked so hard in her life, and never once bitched about it when she had every right to.  She was my all time hero and I loved her dearly.  I have all the gear that my grandfather used to harness and hitch up his prized horse team in the 1920s and 1930s and I still have his one bottom horsedrawn plow. I have his prized Minneapolis Moline tractor from the mid 1950s, still runs.  I still use the scraper where my grandfather scraped mud off his boots, the cement stoop is still there where my grandmother sharpened her kitchen knives (I can hear the scraping sound in my mind when I think about it).  I know exactly where I helped my grandfather plant his prized Indian corn when I was only five years old.  I pick berries from my father's favorite currant bush that he lovingly planted back in the late 1960s and carefully tended to for the rest of his life.  I get to watch my mother's favorite flowers bloom every spring and think of her.  I am flooded with memories and history that put me at peace, there is no place I would rather be in the world than right where I am.  Such are the memories that fade and get lost when connections to the land get broken.  

But of course, the only constant in life is change...

The only old photo I have of the place, taken winter of 1938.  My mother and her two sisters were all born in this house.  A baby boy was born as well but only lived a few days.  My grandfather passed away in this house as well.  The house still exists but has been added onto several times over the decades.

At time of photo the farm site still did not have electric power, nor did the house have any indoor plumbing.  Of course no phone either.  Was a rather tough existence I would say, compared to today.

That's an amazing looking place & a nice story Tom. Please look into the Skip program that Mike Haasl mentioned. It will help you find someone worthy to take care of that beautiful piece of land that means so much to you.

Please contact me at Nevadamatters2me@gmail.com as I am looking for a small permaculture farm.

Tom Knippel wrote:The only old photo I have of the place, taken winter of 1938.  My mother and her two sisters were all born in this house.  A baby boy was born as well but only lived a few days.  My grandfather passed away in this house as well.  The house still exists but has been added onto several times over the decades.

At time of photo the farm site still did not have electric power, nor did the house have any indoor plumbing.  Of course no phone either.  Was a rather tough existence I would say, compared to today.

Oh I just love this! Reminds me of my childhood. Sweet memories.