Goochlandia

G O O C H L A N D I A

Luke is eagerly awaiting the sneak attack from the vicious squirrels and pine cones during a fall morning walk

About us

We, Scott & Michelle, moved from Richmond City to a home in western Goochland County with our two kids, M & G, and our dogs Luke and Leia in May 2020…..in the midst of all things COVID with school shut downs and social distancing from friends and family. Scott works as a palliative care nurse practitioner at a regional academic medical center and Michelle was a chaplain at a seminary in the area, but now stays at home due to medical reasons. Richmond will always be our home and we love the city, but it was time for a change.

This move had been a culmination of over a decade of planning, discussions, daydreaming, “what ifs…” scenarios and intense dialogue about where we wanted to reside as a family and life goals eg honey bees, chickens, dairy goats, small scale farming and a general desire for more nature and to live as sustainably as possible. Hunting has also been a new endeavor with an emphasis on sustainability for both healthy animal populations (deer & turkey) and the overall wellbeing of the forest. For years, Scott has been promising to “go into the woods and get it myself” if we ever started to incorporate meat into our diets, and here we are….

Welcome to our blog! We hope you find our musings about city/country life transition, pictures of nature, forest critters & the fur babies, child wrangling, ventures in sustainable living and other topics amusing and enjoyable. If this blog is an extension of our home, we hope our guests are comfortable and getting what they need. Scott may post on his palliative care/hospice experiences from time to time, but we will clearly label this in a separate folder w/ trigger warnings for folks who prefer not to read that.

6 months now since the big move…..still figuring stuff out and wrapping up moving tasks (like why in the $%*@ did we move this random thing?) Unpacking has been hampered by social distancing, erratic schedules, changing jobs (Scott), virtual school starting in August, chronic illness, and a myriad of other factors. Because we go big or go home on life transitions, in October we purchased the adjacent 5 acres (all wooded) immediately north of our existing property line as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to keep the land in its natural state before it was bought and developed. So holy crap, what do we do now with 17 acres……?!?!

The creek crossing on NE property edge during summer

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

Haldir to Merry,  The Fellowship of the Ring ,J.R.R Tolkien

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