The Early Years

This year, 2023, is going to mark 25 years since we’ve lived at our family property in Wisconsin. I was looking at some old pictures from 1998 when we moved here; they sure created some strong feelings of nostalgia.  We’ve dug some very deep roots here for sure!

We didn’t know much about homesteading, gardening, raising animals or construction, there was a big learning curve for us. Long before the internet we relied on the library, books, and magazines to learn about all these topics. Years before we started building the log cabin, we poured through tons of books educating ourselves and getting ideas.

Back in IL my cousin Bob had sent us a couple Countryside magazines which gave us the inspiration to “homestead”.  We started gardening down there and got into rabbits also, hiding a small rabbitry in a backyard shed. I butchered my first rabbit when we still lived in IL. Again, books and magazines were our go-to source for knowledge. We brought the rabbits north with us when moved to the farm.

We primarily had Mini Rex, a small breed of rabbit with an amazingly plush fur.  We bought our first trio from a young girl who was raising and selling rabbits to put herself through college at the time.  They were the nicest Mini Rex rabbits we’ve ever seen to this day, we kind of regret getting out of rabbits, because that line was just amazing. In the early years our kids entered a couple of them in the county fair and won lots of ribbons.

Moving here was like turning kids loose on a new playground, it was the adventure of our lives! We immediately got into everything related to homesteading and we acquired a menagerie of animals and planted gardens. We had gotten a large 24-foot tepee a year or two before which was a terrific novelty and we had lots of great times in that tepee with family and friends. In those days people knew us as the “tipi people” not necessarily a title we wanted but it was such a novelty around here and it was highly visible from the road.

People we met kept saying “with all those animals you should have a petting zoo”.  We were just about flat broke and I was thinking and praying about what to do, and those words inspired me to suggest to the family that we give a petting zoo a try.  Since we lived on Highway 17, the main drag between Rhinelander and Eagle River, it was a prime location.  Kelli and the kids were up for the idea and we quickly whipped the place into shape for public viewing.  It was already the middle of summer so we didn’t have many weeks to be open but during that brief time we had over 500 admissions, many of them repeats of the same families returning over and over! But then as things went we fell into the garbage business in October and never did get back to opening up the “petting farm” as we called it. We probably could have had a good thing going, but it did make us nervous having our whole lives on public display!

However, it was during those early years that we had started selling farm produce self-serve at the end of our driveway. It began when we had a surplus of chicken eggs and tried an experiment of putting them out at the road on a table in a cooler selling them under the honor system. We were amazed that we never got ripped off and in fact many times had more money in the can than we should have with people giving us more than we asked. Back where we came from the eggs, table, and cooler would have all disappeared without a trace, so we were quite pleased that the idea worked! In subsequent years we started selling more and more produce out front and eventually had a roadside produce stand every summer. We welcomed other area gardeners to help contribute to the farm stand and for a couple seasons we even tried doing a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture, selling produce by subscriptions or membership.

We had broken ground on building the cabin in 1999 and it took us a few years to complete before we started renting it out.  Once the log cabin rentals got going we basically had 3 businesses at once, the garbage business, the cabin rental and the summertime farm stand.  We did just about anything and everything to make a living. People had told us you need to be able to do 12 different things to survive here and we found that to be almost accurate, at least for us anyway. I suppose we could have went all-out at one thing and been further ahead but we were trying to get out of the rat race which is one of the things made us want to live in the country.

Kelli and I are now moving into a new season of life. Our adult kids and 6 grandchildren so far are becoming more of a focal point. Going at a slower pace is a new personal goal of mine, I am beginning to really embrace the “work smarter not harder” philosophy as I am getting closer to 60 years old every day!

Below are some pictures from the early years of us living here.

A horse shelter, one of our first larger building projects. Poles cut from our land.

We sided the horse shelter with slab wood that we got for free from an area sawmill.

King and Queen, Belgian Draft Horses we bought with the sleigh from Dan, a local horse man.

King was an impressive animal!

They say Belgians are docile but King had attitude, a previous owner named Jules told me King once killed another horse. A nice beginner horse…not really! We often jumped into the deep end during our early years!

Kelli grooming Queen. Queen was a perfect horse and made up for King’s lack of manners.

A man named Dave, who delivered King and Queen to us when we bought them, owned a riding stable and would let us keep horses for him when he wasn’t using them. He even brought saddles and bridles, the deal was, you feed them and take care of them in exchange for the use of the horses. He did this with other people as well to save on feed costs when they weren’t in use. These two old timers were perfect beginner horses for our kids but they were pretty much on their last legs.

The first summer in 1998 we didn’t have running water and hauled our water from a wayside 6 miles away. We did the laundry in tubs and hung it on clotheslines to dry. Notice the solar shower at the lower left in the photo, we heated water with that and also showered with it in our green house.

Laundry day was a family affair!

Everyone loved the tipi!

Kelli and I learning together how to butcher chickens inside during our first winter. With the first- ever chicken we butchered, Kelli read a step by step article in a Countryside magazine while I did the cutting.

Everything was a learning experience and we did it all as a family. Tapping maple trees was always exciting to see that pure maple sap pouring out for free!

We took every opportunity to explore the land and snowshoeing was a great way to get around. The bonus to snowshoeing is there are no bugs in the winter!

Nanie and Papa heading back to IL after a visit in 1998. They moved up a few years later after my dad retired.

These are just some of the highlights of when we first moved here. We packed a lot of living in and had absolutely no regrets coming here. Of course we missed family and friends that we left behind but this place has become a popular destination for many of those loved ones.

More than a few people have told us there is something special about this place and we feel that God definitely has His hand in that. On at least two occasions we have had rainbows contained within the boundaries of our land and it seems like God is reminding us that He has a plan for us here and we can trust Him.

Until Next Time