Birds' Eye view of our farm

If you want to visualize some of what I've been describing, try copying this link  http://www.bing.com/maps   It's for bing maps.   Once you are on their website, type in our address.  Click on "Birds' eye" at the top of the map.  You'll get a clearer picture.  Click on the "+" sign at the top right of the photo and it will zoom in (you may have to click on the map and drag our property's image back into the center).  Then you can use the arrows (on either side of the circle with the "N" in it) to see the farm from north, west, south, and east.  Click on the arrow and then wait for your computer to adjust the image for a clear view. The house is the light yellow building in among the trees, the garage is the slate-blue building with the white metal roof.  The barn is obvious, and the chicken coop for the Barnevelders is a small building to the north.   The raised bed garden will be in the almost triangular grassy area just north of the house (the evergreens you can see with the wood mulch under them are mostly gone, because they were much bigger than the photo shows).  Jeff has already put together the center garden bed and we're moving it slightly now and then to get it just the right spot (my perfectionism).  Can't fill it with compost and soil until it's in just the right spot! You can't see all the underbrush that we've cut to make the place seem more airy and less like a dense forest.  The livestock fence goes around the back area behind (west of) the barn, and there's a 12 foot diameter firepit in the very center of that open area now.  The dogs and the cows get the run of most of that area (almost an acre).  Shadow is now too scared of where she might get zapped by the electric fence and will hardly step foot inside the fence.  I'm wondering if Jeff is right and if Shadow might be developing cataracts in her eyes (meaning she couldn't see the white twine/wire that the current is running through by the cows' pen).  ;( We were surrounded by corn in the fields last summer, but it will be soybeans this summer.  If you can make out the long rectangle of fields going back from our property to the treeline to the west (it has the diagonal green strip running through it), that is 75 acres, now owned by the estate of the farmer who lived north of us.  Ours is 2 acres, the little green square that our farmhouse and buildings sit on.   (Side notes:  Originally, back in 1840, a preacher from New Jersey bought 40 acres here directly from the U.S. government, for no more than $50.  Parts of our house may date back to 1850, which would be about the time that preacher moved his family here and he became the first Baptist pastor in Greenwood (to the north of us about a mile).  He and his wife celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on this property before she passed away a few years later.  He lost 2 daughters to diseases here, too, before remarrying and having that wife also die.  Apparently he also caused a commotion by opposing a bigger and newer Baptist church, after he was done being the official pastor of the smaller start-up church.  By 1870 he was listed back in the New England area for the national census.  There is still a small Baptist church in Greenwood, but I haven't been able to find out if that's the one which dates back to the "newer" church in the history books.  Something to check out someday, along with a trip to the cemetery to seek out the Whittier name on the tombstones.) Back to the map:  You can see, if you zoom out, that we're in the country, but that subdivisions are pretty close to the north and to the south.  Wonder Lake isn't too far to the east.  Makes me wonder how much longer the fields around us will stay open, but thankfully, there aren't new developments going up anywhere in Woodstock or this area right now. Have a good day. Laura.