The Dream

      For a little background on this, please check out Cheap Wine and Cookies, my former blog.  Over there you'll find details on the three years that brought us to this point.

       In about a year, I expect to leave the Marine Corps.  We will be moving.  These things are both moderately certain.  Everything else is a little up in the air:

Ideally:
       We want to (probably) sell the house we have now, and purchase a piece of property with some more acrage to it.  Right now we're looking at anything from 3 - 150 acres.  We're looking for something with some forest and some open area for gardening and pasturing livestock.  We want something with a body of water on it - be it a stream, river, lake, or pond. 

       I'd like it to already have a home and maybe even an outbuilding or two on it that we can improve on.  MacGyver is all about building a fully sustainable earth home from the ground up.  We'll see.

      Our intention is to start out trying to grow enough food to support our family.  Once we know what we're doing, we want to turn the whole operation into a teaching farm.  I might also market my teas.  MacGyver might also expand on his green home consulting.  But the main goal is to have our own little humane, chemical free, self sufficient haven.

      Am I quitting my job?  Are we going off grid?  No and No.  Not yet, at least.  While a major part of leaving the Marines is to be able to spend more time at home with my children and to devote more time to causes I care about, I still love being a lawyer, and I still think that I have a lot of potential to help people that way.  Plus, if I'm not forced to leave the house, I can get a little hermit-y ;-)

       I'm looking for jobs all over.  I'm looking mainly for work with various non-profits or with the government.  I'm also considering becoming a college professor for a state funded school.  Perhaps I'll have the opportunity to do both.

      Where I find a job will ultimately determine a lot about our dream.  We want to move back to within 10 hours (read: a one day - or night - drive) of my parents.  This might not happen.  We'll see.  I'm looking all over and will have to do some weighing of a lot of factors when it comes to jobs.  Or not.  If, you know, I only get one job offer.  Or none.  Then it's three more years in cammies.

      At least once a week, MacGyver and I sit together with our tea while the kids and dogs wreak utter chaos all around us and discuss the latest in green technology, green homes, and Ethical Eating.  We talk about all the things we can't wait to do and how we're going to make it work.  We discuss livestock and gardening, cooking and preserving, the where and the how.  We talk about making a difference here before we leave.  Mostly, we dream.

      It may not all happen.  Heck, maybe most of it won't happen.  That remains to be seen.  But today, it's our dream, and starting now, we're pursuing it.

      Join us, won't you?