Settling into NE Tennessee from Montana *Starting over with lots to learn*

Jeff n Jenny

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We are coming through our third winter and second year on this old farm. Our first lesson was pH. We get ~54" rain annually compared to 9" in western Montana. The water molecule brings H (hydrogen) to the soil, making it acidic. Very different from the alkaline dry soil out west. We are flirting with organic methods, reading lots of stuff. We like the following authors: Pat Colby, William Albrecht, Newman Turner, Joel Salatin, and some others. This is cow country, more so since the tobacco industry is waning. We like sheep and cows for starting our new adventure. Sheep are more work for us because of the predator threat in this backcountry. We still have lots to do with the basics: building repairs, fencing, clearing, and rehabilitating pasture and fields. We kept sheep for 2-seasons without a fence, training to lead ropes and learned a lot working with them. We tethered our ram when he would get rammy, but most of the time he was a good boy. I have heart surgery coming up so we downsized a bit and sold our flock :( . I miss the bunch and would have preferred to keep some of the best trained to rebound with. Nothing like an animal that knows the routine to help others fall in line.
We're here to learn and help anyone if we can.
 
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Baymule

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Welcome to the forum, we are glad to have you here! Please put your general location in your avatar, I'll never remember where you are!

My husband had a triple bypass 5 years ago. He flunked a stress test, got sent for heart catherization and did not leave the hospital. 3 arteries were blocked 95% and he had surgery 2 days later. He did his physical therapy and was better than ever.

So if you are having heart surgery, I will pray for a speedy recovery.

We also have sheep, they are so much fun. I'm sorry that you had to sell yours, but you will recover from surgery and be good to go.
 

Jeff n Jenny

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Welcome to the forum, we are glad to have you here! Please put your general location in your avatar, I'll never remember where you are!

My husband had a triple bypass 5 years ago. He flunked a stress test, got sent for heart catherization and did not leave the hospital. 3 arteries were blocked 95% and he had surgery 2 days later. He did his physical therapy and was better than ever.

So if you are having heart surgery, I will pray for a speedy recovery.

We also have sheep, they are so much fun. I'm sorry that you had to sell yours, but you will recover from surgery and be good to go.

Howdy!

I'm sorry for your loss.
May the Lord fill you with His love, bless you with rich memories, and grow you through a difficult season.

I'm a Veteran with a history of asbestos exposure so the VA watches my lungs.
Last year, after a routine chest CT, there was a lot of excitement.
I thought it was Mesothelioma, but thankfully it wasn't.
The CT showed a large aneurysm on the root of my aorta. The VA sent me to Vanderbilt Univ, in Nashville.
I guess like a tree root goes down into the ground, the aorta goes down into the heart. They will basically remove/open the top of the heart, remove the valve, repair the aorta and put me back together.
I just had my Cardio/heart-Cath. last week which looked good. That was the last pre-op study, I think.
I thought we were doing this in October but the VA is a large bureaucracy ...,
I'm thankful for the VA healthcare system. Part of military training was the drill, "hurry up and wait."

I had to figure out what an Avitar is, lol. I haven't done much social media, so this is another learning curve for me to work through. It made sense to share a little background too.

I miss the sheep. I would have never thought that they would become my friends. Most went to Homesteads and we've made some good friends from that, the last two I sold by the pound. They were twins born last year.
They would follow me around like a couple of puppies, outback to feed cows, ... they were a lot of fun.
I trained our first sheep to lead, and all of the rest were like pets. In a perfect world, I would have kept some to help train others. Looking forward to round 2.

We'd love to hear about your sheep if you want to share sometime :)
Thank you for the welcome
 

Jeff n Jenny

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Welcome! Good luck with your heart surgery!
Howdy Wildbird!
Whereabouts in Idaho? I lived on Baldy Mt. near Sandpoint, also spent a summer on a survey crew by Council, East Hornet Creek going into Hells Canyon. I fought fire north of Salmon, fished/floated/bounced up and down some of your beautiful rivers, and I have some family down by Idaho Falls (coffee's kicking in ). I spent a lot of time in SW Montana, Selway/Bitterroot.
Thank you for the welcome and kind wishes :)
 

WildBird

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Howdy Wildbird!
Whereabouts in Idaho? I lived on Baldy Mt. near Sandpoint, also spent a summer on a survey crew by Council, East Hornet Creek going into Hells Canyon. I fought fire north of Salmon, fished/floated/bounced up and down some of your beautiful rivers, and I have some family down by Idaho Falls (coffee's kicking in ). I spent a lot of time in SW Montana, Selway/Bitterroot.
Thank you for the welcome and kind wishes :)
Wow, you've had some cool adventures! I'm in western Idaho.
 

Baymule

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Howdy!

I'm sorry for your loss.
May the Lord fill you with His love, bless you with rich memories, and grow you through a difficult season.

Hold on there! I read my post again, I guess I made it sound like he died when I said he didn't leave the hospital! :lol: What I meant was that after his heart cath, they admitted him and then he had a triple bypass. He ain't dead yet! Whoo-boy! Wait until I tell him I killed him on social media! He might not think that funny! :gig
 

thistlebloom

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Howdy Wildbird!
Whereabouts in Idaho? I lived on Baldy Mt. near Sandpoint, also spent a summer on a survey crew by Council, East Hornet Creek going into Hells Canyon. I fought fire north of Salmon, fished/floated/bounced up and down some of your beautiful rivers, and I have some family down by Idaho Falls (coffee's kicking in ). I spent a lot of time in SW Montana, Selway/Bitterroot.
Thank you for the welcome and kind wishes :)

Welcome from n Idaho! :frowI was born in IF,my great grandparents homesteaded in Swan Valley, my Kid@1 lives in Sandpoint at the base of Baldy. He's a wildland firefighter, working on Helitack, and I'm 30 miles south between Sandpoint and CDA. Small world!
What lured you to Tennessee?
 

Jeff n Jenny

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Welcome from n Idaho! :frowI was born in IF,my great grandparents homesteaded in Swan Valley, my Kid@1 lives in Sandpoint at the base of Baldy. He's a wildland firefighter, working on Helitack, and I'm 30 miles south between Sandpoint and CDA. Small world!
What lured you to Tennessee?
Howdy!
You live in some fine country! I love Idaho :)

I'm gonna stretch my neck way out over the political chopping block for a minute:
Idaho is way ahead of Montana with the wolf problem. Now I do believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I believe that the old ranchers loved their children and livestock enough to not want them drug off. So they got after the Griz and the Wolves until the threat was far enough away that their kids & critters were safe. It's only a matter of time before some campers or smoke jumpers get shredded. Imagine jumping or packing into backcountry to fight fire with chainsaws, all your other gear, with guns & ammo. Who's going to stand guard at the spike camp? In the meantime, where are all of the moose? The elk herds are shrinking... Me, I don't think it's a good thing. Just my opinion. They turned out Red Wolves here in Appalachia, more on the NC side than here, but they will spread, just like they crossed in Oregon from Idaho. OK, all done with that.

Why Tennessee? I get that a lot. Here too, and this is some pretty country. No USFS big spaces but we have ~10 square miles behind our end of the road farm that backs up into Virginia. No roads, homes, just wild hardwoods. The ridge runs mostly east to west, rising to the north behind us. We're mostly southerly exposed and the ridge is a watershed between two river systems. The north slope is steep like most are, often shaded backing down to the Powell River. No bridges, no access to the north side, well no easy access.

I really loved Montana and Idaho. Personally I think Id. has better rivers. Both have mountains and plenty of wilderness. I hiked, fished, camped, fought fire (VFD & USFS), skied, worked and played there. Even farmed a little :) Well, I'm not as tough as I used to be. I got busted up which turned into a hip replacement and 4-years later a revision (a part swap). I can't risk skiing anymore (well maybe just one more time?) and it's a long winter season. I'm not a couch rider, I gotta be doing something! So we converted a 1-ton van into the prairie schooner and started fishing our way down the Clark Fork to the Yellowstone to the Missouri, down to the Mississip, where I didn't want to eat the fish (no offense). Bee-lined it to the southeast coast of N.C., up the outer banks, up the Chesapeake, and Deleware Bays, and on up past the Taughannock & Niagra Falls to the St. Lawrence River to let Jenny taste a fish from that water.

Winter was coming and 7-months had gone by so we spun the compass, pointed south and went back to the Neuse River by the Pamlico Sound in NC. We found an empty house on the river bank to rent for the winter and settled into a wetsuit to tend my gill net and catch crabs til the water got too cold for fish and the otters came in. I believe that the prettiest sunrises in the world are right there! (pics from the front yard) All the while, look'n for a home of our own. We live in a beautiful country! God Bless the USA! We had run over Tennessee some and liked it lots. Spring came and we broke camp to rent a house in middle Tennessee that I had scouted out earlier. It's hard to find a farmhouse to rent, in nice country when nobody knows you, but towns make too much noise for me.

The winds off the Great Lakes mix with some of that warm Gulf air and make them things called swirling big winds of trouble. Pretty country but I don't want to watch my lambs (or anyone else's) gyrating round some funnel cloud. So I had seen this other farm back in NE Tennessee but the water rights were a mess and we rented another house fished some more rivers and FINALLY, whew, finally found this place. And I mean by then we were haggard; just plum wore out from looking, and really just wanted to be home working on our own projects, watching our dreams unfold along with those of others :) It's good to be home!
 

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Jeff n Jenny

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Hold on there! I read my post again, I guess I made it sound like he died when I said he didn't leave the hospital! :lol: What I meant was that after his heart cath, they admitted him and then he had a triple bypass. He ain't dead yet! Whoo-boy! Wait until I tell him I killed him on social media! He might not think that funny! :gig
I LOVE GOOD NEWS!!! Thanks for turning me around. Now you gotta bake him something good to celebrate :)
 
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