It all started back in May of 1978, just after my eighteenth birthday,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

while I was out on a date playing music with a young man whom I had just met, (by the way I married that wonderful man Rich Burger and I'm still living happily ever after!) He was playing his guitar and suddenly sang out a song for me with these lyrics by Neil Young: 

 

 

 We had a couple sweet babies and so in the midst of our travels we decided to settle down in San Antonio Texas to raise them and lived in a nice apartment near the airport.

Well nostalgia grabbed me good, for I had been raised a "Country Girl", harvesting, then drying or canning the fruit from the orchards of cherries, pears, plums and apples, and picking blackberries and strawberries by the many many pounds for the wonderful preserves and home-made wine, along with raising chickens for their wonderful eggs and growing produce organically for canning and freezing long before it was even considered fashionable and as the best way to grow them. And I had also worked on a vegetable farm that specialized in succession planting from the time I was 12 until I was 16. So because I didn't care for living in that busy apartment complex and I missed the country-life so much, I made the decision to buy some land and move our young family out to the country!

As a mother, I raised my children in all the ways that a "Country Girl/Mama" should, but when my children "flew the coop" (so to speak) I gave away all my livestock, temporarily shut down my organic farm dream, then spent a 6-1/2 year stint doing a 40 mile commute to the city Monday through Friday to earn some extra money to pour into the farm so that all of my "Country Girl" dreams could be fulfilled to their fullest!

Then I left my city-job and returned to walking in the joy of my dream of Sustainable Living, Organic Veggie Farming, backyard catfish in a barrel, tending Pasture-Raised hens for their wonderful eggs and my two Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats "Genevieve & Gisele" for their awesome raw milk to make my artisan cheeses with.

My goals for the future will still remain; to grow a Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, to grow rows and rows of blackberries, strawberries and blueberries, along with the apple, lemon, peach and fig trees that I already have going. Also to plant a field of lavender, an olive-tree grove, to have hives of honey bees, and to run my home fully on solar power!!!!

 

Then this picture was taken in June of 2005 while out on a nice date.

 

My how the years fly by!

 

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