Love Living in Ozarks

When we moved to Summersville, MO this is one of the reasons we chose this place. Small home town of less than 500 people. They live and work here and love living here in the woods and large farm lands and crystal clear rivers. Farmers, loggers, teachers and more working together. There is a cafe that opened 6 years ago owned by a local farm family. They made meals and sold produce from their farm at the cafe. Then one night the poorly set up gas line leaked and the place exploded. No one was killed as it happened after hours. But the building was gone. But last year they rented and restored another building and are back in the swing of providing homemade meals. And when we are in town (15 min away) we pick up a to go meal and they put a message on the box. How cool is that? It is winter now so no fresh produce, yet. But I will be posting the wonderful veggies they have for sale this summer. We love the Wuertly Farms Cafe!

Back at home again and our cats are passed out by the wood stove This is Puff and Ump both rescued cats. Our stove has been so worth it. I thought it would be a lot of work cutting and splitting wood (city girl) for heat, but it is not. The wood comes from our land and we get a workout splitting and hauling winter wood for heat.

The ashes go into compost and the chicken yard. My hens love to roll in the ashes. And it cost only gas for our tractor/log splitter and chainsaw but it heats the whole house. And most of the people around here still use a wood stoves like us. When the power goes out we can count on this cast iron Jotul to keeps us toasty. But that is rare in these parts. Plus we have solar panels and do not worry about that. And I really do not like central AC nor central heat. It smells funny and never seems to get the house cool or hot enough. I grew up in New Orleans and had no air conditioning. I do not like the noise of AC. I love to open the windows and turn on the fans. I can hear the farm and the animals.  And when it gets too hot we head down to the rivers like the rest of the town. To play in the rivers and float until the sun sets. Looking forward to some river time this summer.