Thanks for the advice from both of you. s8us89ds - I had to laugh at all your suggestions. :-) All good ideas, most of which we've thought of! I loved your earnestness and how well thought out it was, with the number of easy loops you'd ski, etc.. One important point to note, though, is just HOW rocky it is. It's difficult to convey to anyone who doesn't live in this area just how rocky it is. I have also lived in Maine and Mass. and I've never seen so many rocks. It's like a debris field of granite, mixed in with a little soil. The only area where digging is easy is right around the house, where they filled in (mostly with sand.) Removing the rocks is pretty much out of the question. Oh, also, there are old granite stone walls criss-crossing the woods. (I don't know if I mentioned that before.) We don't want to disturb those, and I am even thinking of clearing around them a bit, since they seem to be fast being swallowed up by dead leaves and such. But it would be nice to have clear trails out to view them. We've also thought of a trail, but we haven't gotten to the point of planning out how we'd do it. With so many rocks, above and below ground, the ground is very uneven. (This wouldn't be much of a problem during the winter when snow evens it out, though.) There's also kind of a boggy area so we'd have to build some sort of wooden bridge or platform in one area, unless we bypassed that area all together. A trail seems great (and we have a "town forest" which has "real" trails yet is only 5 acres, total, so we should be able to do something similar on our land.) It seems like a walking trail would be more doable than a cross-country ski trail, though. Oh, but one problem - we lose a multitude of trees every winter, in wind storms and ice storms. We've had giant trees completely uprooted, and other trees just snap in two. Now it's not just a tangle of thorny bushes, it's a tangle of uprooted and downed trees. The amount of labor needed to clear those downed trees would be great, so we've just cut down the ones which snapped in half (and show from our house) and left the others to do their natural thing.... In any case, right now my biggest concern is working with the transition from yard to woods, and less gardening within the woods (too overwhelming to think about!) All that said, I've rethought this issue a little bit since I posted my initial post. We're going to clear the overgrown blackberry bushes (which form almost an impenetrable border to the woods during the summer) but leave any saplings. That alone will make everything look more tidy. For the most part the cleared area around the house is a basic square (and, by the way, my husband does want to reforest, in part - grass-growing is a never ending battle against nature.) But, we have a little area off to one side of the square which is a perfect area for a firepit. We're going to clear the bushes there and build a stone fire pit. (One would think we'd use the readily-accessible natural stones, but each one is so incredibly heavy and they're half-buried that we will probably use landscaping stones. :-() Then, we just want the transition to woods to look slightly "considered" rather than ignored... at the very least, neatened up. I'd like to grow some lily of the valley... I'd love some wild lupine at the edge, if I can ever get anything to grow. I like the idea of rhododendrons for color. I know there is a woodland botanical garden somewhere in Massachusetts, and they label the native species, and I could visit it to get some ideas.

I'm trying to remember, and I don't think I EVER saw lamb in...um...where I was before. I could find it an hour away at a (very expensive) meat market, but not locally. I seem to recall seeing veal a couple times, but veal is something I won't touch, and so would not notice its presence/absence. Forget finding any bread that wasn't "fluffy" or any fish that wasn't catfish. Don't even think about finding any kind of "exotic" mushroom/pepper/fresh herb. Basically if it can't be sugar coated or deep-fried, isn't hugely processed, doesn't have at least 20% salt/sugar and doesn't contain transfats, forget about finding it there. And forget eating out unless you like fast food or lower quality chains. (They were all a'twitter when Huddle House opened.) Now here? It's not like California where I could literally find anything, but it's pretty darn good. The only thing I've found really lacking is availability of fish (except that d#mned catfish...what the heck is it with the blasted catfish everywhere?) and I do have to really hunt for things like tahini, miso, etc.

graywings, we did make improvements. Our realtor thought we still had it listed too low. Of course, he didn't manage to sell it! We've signed with a property management company that takes 10% of the monthly rent, plus an extra 15% of the first month to cover their advertising, interviewing clients, etc., etc. DH just doesn't want to get those midnight calls about the plumbing, and this is about the only way he could make himself agree to renting it. brickeye, we won't be trying to sell it while it's rented. I posted earlier, I just don't want to do that to a renter. Until it is rented we've told the previous agent he can show it if someone comes into his office and is in the market for this type of house, but with no signs and no advertising. This is okay with the property management agency. I told the new realtor we just weren't comfortable with a 10-month listing and had decided to rent it. She's the one that recommended this p.m. agency to us in the first place. Next step is to see if it will rent; wish us luck!

There are areas in MI also becoming known for their blossoming "local food" economies. Oddly for me, in my rural area local grown food has become LESS available with the closing down of our big vegetable farm and stand and several orchards. Family run and current generation not wanting or able to make a go of it. No new ones starting up. A relatively new U-pick blueberry place closed during the pandemic, not sure why, I don't think it was pandemic related. Local flower barn closing as current generation running it goes to medical school. Both growing and serving food are tough ways to make a living, narrow margins . . . I hope more local stuff will rise out of the pandemic ashes but so far in my community, results are mixed. Folks are largely poor, so markets for most any product are limited. Real problem finding farm labor with border and anti-immigrant issues greatly affecting farmers. That's the reason the flower farm is closing, inability to find enough workers locally. They relied on generations of families that worked one season in Mexico and the other in MI. That channel is drying up. Same with young people with the skills and drive to even want to take the immense economic risk of going into agriculture as a living. Most folks I know working in ag have an alternate main source of income. Can't really run a restaurant that way. I have a friend who grew up working her family restaurant. Everyone in the family worked there. Closed after her parents died, her one brother tried to run it but gave up. She had no interest in the restaurant business.