Home 2020

...and it is NOT an 18 inch waist! Part 1:   The Land From this picture you may think that Katie Scarlett and I had the burning of Atlanta in common, close, but it's really the love of the land. In the movie, Gone With The Wind, Gerald O'Hara said to Scarlett, " It will come to you, this love of the land. There's no gettin' away from it if you're Irish. "    Followed up a little later with,  " Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, that Tara, that land doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dyin' for, because it's the only thing that lasts."  This is story of the land, three sisters, a new husband, and a farmstead in the family for 142 years, this year.   It is the story of saving a farm house from ruins, a house where my parents raised a dozen kids,  a house that saw laughter, tears, and  a lot of wine! It starts in 1860, when a quarter-section of land, was given by the United States government to a widow of the War of 1812, Elizabeth North, by a land grant  signed by President James Buchanan.  In the same year, 1860, our fictional, Scarlett O'Hara, would have been dressed in hoop skirts and seducing the Tarleton twins.   This was only six years before  a 20 year old from Norway, made his way to Iowa by way of Wisconsin, with a stay in Boone County, Iowa, where he married his bride, Betsy Olson.  In 1873, Gunder and Betsy, purchased 80 acres from that quarter-section at $10 an acre.  And like the Wilder's from "Little House On the Prairie", they settled there in a...