Although Monika and I both enjoyed teaching at the Camden campus of Rutgers University and appreciated the wonderful colleagues we had there, in the past several years we felt ourselves increasingly alienated form the sprawl, congestion, mindless consumerism, and general ugliness that surrounded us in South Jersey.  For me, thoughts of an alternative were spurred by a study I did for the Rand Institute on agritourism  (pretty much anything that connects farmers directly with the general public)  in South Jersey, a project that also landed me a seat on the New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture’s Agritourism Council.   For both of us, visiting farms and talking to farmers harked back to summers spent in farm country growing up, in Bavaria and Vermont respectively.

And so….we find ourselves now in retirement with a five-acre property in Virginia, on Blue Rock Lane in Roseland, Nelson County.  We love our new life, and this blog is intended partly as a record for ourselves and our family, and also as a way of sharing our new life with friends, former students, and anyone else who may be interested.