4 Year Anniversary of Glenmirril

 Welcome to Glenmirril--in Modern America!

Four years ago today, on September 1, 2021, my husband and I left Eden Prairie, MN in the Minneapolis suburbs to move to 29 acres in northern Minnesota, that bordered thousands of acres of state forest. Our goal: self-sufficiency. 

We named our property Glenmirril after the castle in medieval Scotland where Shawn spends several years doing spy missions and fighting for the Bruce. Glenmirril, in The Blue Bells Chronicles, was named for the miracle of the fog rising that hid them from Edward I's view as he marched right past them to take Urquhart Castle in 1297. The Laird renamed the castle Glenmirril: The Glen of Miracles. 

Despite being on a mountain top, we named our new property the same, needing and expecting miracles in our major undertaking. We had, after all, just left behind decades of suburban convenience, the only world and way of life we'd ever known, a world of academics and music and computers, to learn how to raise our own food. Chris had grown a 'salsa garden' in pots on his deck. And he had a great deal of knowledge that helped us, from his days as an Eagle Scout. But he had spent decades at his desk and I myself had never so much as grown a head of lettuce. Neither of us had any experience with any animal other than cats and dogs. We just might need a few miracles!

It's four years today since we moved into our home on the outskirts of Duluth. Since then we have made a cross-country move to the Appalachians where our glen of Miracles is once again on a mountain top. And yes, we've had miracles! Duluth's winters start early and are long. So we spent the winter researching and really only started our venture in May of 2022--just 3-1/2 years ago!

In that time, I've successfully grown gardens, learned about companion planting, battled groundhogs attacking our garden--and here in the Appalachians, skunks, possum and raccoons attacking our chickens. I've learned to raise chickens and rabbits and to process them for meat. I've learned that not all sheep produce wool. Ours are American blackbellies & St. Croix--both hair sheep who don't need to be sheared.

My hands that once played harp now often have dirt beneath the nails. I collect rabbit pellets for fertilizer. I love the personalities of each of the sheep and the way they bawl at me in the morning to hurry up with their food and crowd around me fighting for it--only to bolt in fear if I make the slightest alarming move, by which I mean raise an eyebrow. I find them hilarious and I often tell them so.

I've seen the wonder of birth, of new lambs and tiny hairless newborn rabbits. I've dealt with death and loss as our original breeding trio of rabbits has escaped or died, as a newborn lamb only 24 hours old, fell in a water tank and drowned. I wrapped her in towels and laid her in front of a heater in my office but finally, after many hours, had to admit to myself she was gone.

I've learned to nurse our sick ewe, Maisy, back to health with daily injections of vitamin B, sitting sometimes for an hour a day in the sheep shed with her, making sure she had water and food, supervising as she regained strength and watching over her as she was re-introduced to the flock. I've dealt with an injured rabbit and injured chickens and I've had my first poison spider bite.

I've had very real miracles in our time in Appalachia. I got in between the first real, vicious dog fight I've ever seen and got bitten in the process. But I know from friends it could have been much worse. I could have lost a finger or had my face scarred. 

I was trampled by a ram that outweighed me at 170 pounds, the first time we tried to load sheep to take to the processing facility. He knocked me flat on my back and ran right across my from toe to head. I could have lost an eye or teeth. Not only was I not injured, I wasn't even sore the next day.

The biggest miracle was the day the UTV malfunctioned on a hill. Normally, rocking it got it to kick into gear. This time, it knocked it out of park and it came rolling backward at me. I remember seeing it and then lying flat on my back in the branches and brambles next to it where we dump our fallen branches and weeds and more. I have no idea how I got there. This time I avoided not mere injury, but a very horrible death. And once again, I wasn't even sore the next day, and had not even a scratch despite somehow landing flat on my back in a pile of twigs, brambles and branches.

I've learned to operate a business, to manage the many jobs needing doing here, with our farm hands. Chris has his Kubota tractor and has learned its many uses on our steep hills, including mowing & raking hay. (One day it will also be baled.) I've learned to build concrete forms and a sheep shelter.

We've learned about the value of community, connection, and friendship. We have a fantastic group of homesteaders here, almost all of them new to the state and relatively new to this lifestyle. We have Alice who heads our group, setting up classes to help us learn from each other and letting people know about events or jobs or things that she knows they're interested in. Down the hill, is Amanda who was here in a heartbeat when Maisy got sick, to help me haul her back to a sternal position so she wouldn't die of bloat. There are many more. 

Across the street is Rusty who stops by now and again to help us unload cattle panels from the truck or, most recently, help us move a 500-pound crate down our steep driveway. He and I each stood on one of the forklift's tines, pulling at the ropes securing the crate so it couldn't tip down toward the tractor.

In the suburbs, it's easy to be independent. It's easy to get too caught up in our lives to even meet our neighbors. In our new lifestyle, it's much more important.

Why do I document this journey? Because many realized in 2020 that the government can, with a wave of the wrist, kick us out of our jobs and leave the grocery stores bare of toilet paper and Ramen noodles. I understood, in the spring of 2020 that today it was toilet paper, but tomorrow, if forces so decreed, it would be food. Any food. All food. I understood the world I grew up in was lost to widespread corruption and I must change my life accordingly. I am not alone. Millions of others saw the same thing and are already on this same journey, or would like to be. I write for them to show that it can be done and how we're doing it.

After 3-1/2 years, in the past two months we've reached the point where we have many meals where 90% or more of what's on our plates is what we raised and grew here ourselves. We've had some nights where everything other than the salt, pepper, and olive oil is produced here.

Many have asked about when new books are coming out. The Blue Bells Chronicles is complete although I hope to write a collection of short stories about all the people we only see briefly--the widow Murine, the twin who threw a fish down Niall's shirt but became a saint, the Laird's wife, Niall's many brothers who have died, and Hugh's life with his wife. 

I need to finish editing the completed Castle of Dromore about the widow who moves her many sons into a small castle in Scotland, escaping a horrific experience in the States, only to find the castle is haunted by a woman in a green gown.

I'm working on the IV Leak Mysteries, about a young widow who travels the country with her 16-year-old son River, encountering mysteries. It's a bit of a nod to noir.

What I hope to put out very soon is my three books on our transition from suburban to self-sufficiency: High on Spirit Mountain, The Book of Ruth, and Up Above the Hollers. I find that life on a farm always has surprises: a new lamb, a lamb has died, predators attacking the chickens requiring the barn to be fortified and traps to be put out. So I continue to work on the books late at night. The first has gone out to beta readers. The second and third are in editing. It has been a great adventure! Life should always be a great adventure, lived to the fullest. Be the author of your own story.

If you'd like to see more of our life here, find us at:

www.glenmirrilfarms.wordpress.com 

or the much more frequently updated facebook page

 www.facebook.com/GlenmirrilFarms

Watch for announcements of the publication of High on Spirit Mountain, The Book of Ruth, and High Above the Hollers. In the meantime, please check out interviews with authors at Books & Brews and my original music at my YouTube Channel.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GLENMIRRIL!