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Let’s Get Fresh At Polecat
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9016 Lonnie Harris Road Oxford NC, 27565
(919)
690-2182 |
About Us
Sherry
and I met in 1990 while I was visiting a buddy in collage and we bonded
immediately. At the time Sherry was a
vegetarian. When I asked her about her motives,
she told me that she could not agree with the way animals were treated in
“factory farms”. Although I agreed with
her and admired her conviction, I simply enjoyed meat too much to give it up
and didn’t know of any alternatives.
Well, we dated on and off for a couple of years, eventually perusing
romantic interests elsewhere. (I was too young and stupid to know a good thing
when I had it.) Unlike most couples
that do the “we can still be friends” thing, we actually stayed very close
friends over the years. In 1994 I was
honored to drive her to the hospital where she brought Zachary Thomas into the
world.
In
1997 I moved from the D.C. area to Raleigh looking for a job. I soon found a job and got an
apartment. I found apartment life to be
tough after owning a home (a duplex on less than 1/10 of an acre). I was amazed to find that unlike the D.C.
area, there were still places down here where property was affordable. In 1998 I bought 25 acres of woods in
northern Granville county. By 1999 I
was living the country life and loving it.
I always like the idea of “doing something” with the land (though I
never knew what that something might be) but with a full time job and a fifty
mile commute (each way) I was only able to maintain things and work on small
projects. By 2001 I had ten acres
timbered (take the trees leave the stumps) with grand designs of “doing
something” with the land.
Around
Christmas of 2001, Sherry and I came to the realization that we were still in love
and we would both be happiest as a couple again. The only problem was that she lived in Pennsylvania at the time
and I lived in North Carolina. She had
just bought a house and Zachary was in school, so it was easiest for me to
move. I quit my job, packed my things,
moved to PA and went from Mr. Tom to Dad.
Although I was extremely happy to be
living with Sherry and Zachary, I found the readjustment to town life
difficult. I suppose country life had
gotten into my soul. I found myself
thinking of PA as the place I was living until I could come home again. Because of this, I told Sherry that we
needed to either sell our land so I could stop thinking about it or make firm
plans to move back to NC. We came up
with a two-year plan to make the move.
Through a wild series of events that were too much to be considered
coincidence our two-year plan suddenly became a two-month plan. It seemed we were meant to live here. As my sister-in-law, Carol, said, “The
Universe was telling you something.” By
August of 2003 I was able to move back home and bring my new family with
me. What could be better?
Sherry
was able to get a good job, which was one of the reasons we were able to move
so quickly, and her house sold quickly thanks to her Mom and Dad finishing up
projects for us. This took a lot of the
pressure off of me to find a job quickly and I was able to spend a few months
getting us settled and fixing up the place.
I was able to keep up with housework, work on projects and was here when
Zachary came home from school. At one point Sherry told me she dreaded me
getting a job because I was able to get so much done while at home. We both liked the idea of growing our own
food but if both of us were working full time it would be unlikely we would
ever have time for much of a garden.
In October of 2003 we made everything official and got
married right here in our front yard.
We had a small ceremony that included Zachary, since our marriage had as
much to do with him as it did with us.
He and I even exchanged vows.
Because our relationship stayed at the friends level for so long, we
were both able to be there for each other through many of life’s challenges
with out the complication that romance can bring. Sherry has been there to witness me at my best and at my
worst. She has seen everything I have
done right or wrong in my life. There
are no secrets, no skeletons in the closet and she still loves me. What a fantastic thing it is to be able to
marry your best friend.
It
was around this time that we attended a “Putting Small Acreage To Work”
seminar. One of the speakers, Alex Hitt
of Peregrine Farm, answered a question we had often pondered: Do we have enough land to make a living
farming? The answer was yes, but not
with conventional farming methods. That
day, in the parking lot we made the decision that I would stop search for
regular employment and start a farm.