The house sits atop a bluff overlooking Tim's pond and the valley below the pond. Bluff's Creek flows through the valley, causing a fog early each morning until it burns off when the sun appears. We have the highest elevation in Poweshiek County, Iowa. Sh!, Do you hear that? Exactly! Silence.

It's a lovely view from any of our windows! No matter which direction we're looking, we see lush timber. We've seen lots of deer, pheasant, large coveys of quail and flocks turkey. We shut all of our animals up at night to protect them from coyotes; listening to the wail of coyotes in the dark is kind of chilling. We have mulberry trees and wild plum trees all along our property border, which blends well with our signature products of Kiowa House Herbal Teas.

Part of the bounty we harvested this summer. Our tomatoes lasted us into January 2012, we still have some in storage that have yet to ripen. We had an early frost in the 2011 growing season; we picked all the green ones and placed them in storage, laying them in a single layer on green carpet (We stored them in an upstairs bedroom).

 The barn is a favorite hang out for the cats. Restoration of the barn starts in 2012, which is reminiscent of Cyndy's Grandpa McNaul's barn of the 1950s.

 Tim's chickens; Buff Orphingtons. Brown organic eggs with yolks the golden color of marigolds.

 I was holding up three fingers to indicate the number of ears on each stalk of corn. We tried the older style non-hybrid corn, the seeds did not germinate as properly as we had hoped; however, we did get enough to start with fresh seed for the 2012 growing season. Our area was hit hard with lots of rain early on in the spring, holding back the planting. As soon as we put the seed into the ground, we had no rain for about three months and on top of that, we had high winds of 70 to 100 mph winds. It flattened the corn; lost the sweet corn and fed it to the chickens.