I have been meaning to post about life at the farm for a while now. Unpacking, getting settled, Christmas, homeschooling, and starting a brand new lifestyle (complete with animals) all at the same time has made this post take a lot longer to get around to writing. haha.
First, I’m going to tell you about the name of our farm and then I’ll give you some highlights from the past (almost) 2 months of living here.
The name that we decided on for our farm is Lille Myregård. There is a family history connection (of course) with this name. Our farm is named after the farm that my ancestors and relatives have owned for many generations on an island called Bornholm, in the Baltic sea. You can read all about that story here.
On Bornholm, the farms all have names. In the case of Lille Myregård, Lille means little, Myre could mean a few things… “ant,” “bog or marsh, moist soil,” or a name “Mr. and Mrs. Myre,” and Gård means farm.
So all together it could be Little Ant Farm, Little Marsh Farm, or Little Mr./Mrs. Myre Farm.
Myre looks similar to mire to me which means “a stretch of swampy or boggy ground.” This makes me think of when the Latter-day Saint pioneers first came to the town, Commerce, Illinois, to settle it. Commerce was a boggy, marshy, undeveloped swamp. Joseph Smith knew what the place could and would become and he renamed it Nauvoo, which is Hebrew for “beautiful place” or “a beautiful plantation.”
Although our farm that we have here in Kansas isn’t a swamp, and it already has a lot of natural beauty, we have a vision for how we can nurture this land and cultivate it into something even more beautiful, unique, and personal to us. We are looking forward to a few years in the future when it will be even more like the vision that we have in our minds. Fruit trees, flowers, a thriving garden, animals, etc.
Also, while we’re on the topic of names and family history, I thought I would mention that the official name of our homeschool is now Röena Schoolhouse. Kansas homeschool laws require that we name our school and register it as a private school. If you want to know why we chose Röena Schoolhouse, you can read about that here.
Anyway, back to our farm…
There will be many, many posts about our farm but on this first one, I just thought I’d share some of the wild nature (not domesticated) side that we have experienced over the past almost two months…
Side note about the squirrels… we have tons of squirrels that live on our land. They live in our oak trees and we see them all the time. Nearly all of them are this brown gray color like the one in the photo above, but we have one white/silver squirrel that lives in the tree in our front yard… or the tree right across the street. The kids named him (assuming it’s a boy, haha) Dominic, after the little boy from the Calico Critter squirrel (technically chipmunk) family. We see Dominic fairly often but haven’t been able to get a picture of him yet.
We have incredible sunsets here super often. Here is a select sample from 4 different evenings.
We have gorgeous sunrises as well, although not quite as frequently as the sunsets (or maybe I’m just not looking at the right time most mornings).
The next few posts will be about the animals that we have added to our farm so far…