Lost and Finding Joy

Going into this experience it’s always been our intention to do something for the public. For 10-15 years Kevin has wanted to do some type of corn maze business. We’ve searched for farm ground even longer.

In the video where you see me bush hogging for the first time, Kevin describes our original vision. You hear him mention Bruce’s property being adjacent to ours. .

It’s normal to change the details of your vision once you begin taking the steps towards something like this. But, there is more to our wishy-washy, unclear picture for this particular vision.

In the video below you will see Kevin plowing the ground. Notice he is talking to his brother, Bruce. Bruce is the reason we are on this particular farm in the first place. We were looking everywhere but here. We really wanted our farm to be in east Tennessee, near our children and grand-children.

This is the farm where Kevin and his brothers were raised. It was always going to be given to the 5 boys when their parents passed away. Kevin’s dad passed away in 2014 with Alzheimer’s Disease. If you’ve ever experienced a loved one with this disease, you know that’s a whole other personal, emotional topic. We won’t go there here.

Bruce was inspired to encourage their 89 year old mother to go ahead and divide the 80 acres into five equal parts. It really worked out perfectly. Each boy inherited 16 acres with the same amount of road frontage per section. Bruce’s section is right along the left side of our property. This ground would’ve grown up in trees had it not been for Bruce. Nobody did anything with it after Kevin’s dad was moved into a nursing home. It sat there for 10-15 years.. Bruce spent many hours on the 80 acres pulling up trees with his John Deere tractor and tree puller. He enjoyed being out on the farm, but he also didn’t want the land to be so deferred that it would sit there untouched and unused.

Bruce cleared three out of five sections of the farm. He started clearing our section when he asked his mom to divide the land between the boys. The section that was designated for him was barely touched.

How did the land get divided? The five boys and their mom had a meeting and each boy discussed what section they preferred. Kevin has wanted our section since he was a teenager. It has beautiful trees. One tree in particular had significant meaning to him. His friends would come over and they’d hang-out, sitting on a low-hanging limb of the tree. One brother wanted the section with the barn. Two brothers wanted the sections that were ready for houses or selling. Bruce requested the least desired section. That was Bruce.

It was completely unexpected. We had just finished month’s of work on the farm, and were back to Tennessee when we got the news. In July, 2021, Bruce suddenly passed away in his sleep. It was determined to be a heart attack . To say the wind was knocked out of us, would be an understatement.

We re-evaluated whether or not we wanted to continue with our vision on this farm. We reluctantly decided to continue to take steps in that direction.