Dream Acres

A small place, a dream hidden in a fold of the bluff-lands bordering the great Mississippi, surrounded on two sides by the Root river, with a truly classic swimming hole tucked into the corner, Dream Acres is a land collective where only Todd, Evie and their boys live full time. Todd and Evie run a small CSA, serving folks mostly in Rochester, MN, home of the famous Mayo Clinic (Rochester has, really, no other reason for existence). Up slope, and out onto the flatlands is the great American factory-farm, the endless human feedlot on which Americans are getting fattened (for what?).

Dream Acres is host to many workshops, associated with Tillers International, having to do with rural living. Todd & Evie are currently working on a certified kitchen, in which they can produce some value-added products. At present they cannot even sell the syrup they produce from their maple trees because it is not cooked down in a state approved facility complete with appropriate sanitary facilities (no outhouse will ever be good enough). The structure will be timber-frame rather than (now) standard stud-wall construction, hefty locally sawn timbers, mortised and pegged...it gives one a much greater sense of permanence while, in fact, being more amenable to change, because, if you wanted to, you could dismantle the whole thing and use the timbers for another structure, something you could never do with the heap of nail-filled, split-ended 2x4s you'd get if you ever bothered to "dismantle" a frame house rather than simply bulldozing it.

Todd is an ox driving man...he uses a pair of short-horn milker oxen (short-horn milker is the breed...you couldn't actually milk either Atlas or Hercules, since they are both castrated males, hence oxen), yoked up to classically rusting farm equipment (plows, cultivators, mower, rake, and the Rube Goldberg-esque hay loader that spills a waterfall of hay on the unfortunate farm hand designated to see that it stays on the wagon). Atlas and Hercules are pretty stoic about the whole thing...most of the time. Toward the end of they day they can develop a serious preference for hitting the hay (eating, not sleeping), and it takes a confident driver to face down a 2000 pound ox, even a short-horned one.

Farm power is mostly grass-fed. Home power is mostly solar (photo-voltaic panels and fire wood). Entertainment is mostly human (except for the Net Flicks subscription). And the health club subscription comes with the territory (try the stair-master, fifty steps up from field to dinner table after bringing the hay in can really get your heart-rate up).