We Bought a Farm: What's in a name?

We are one month from moving.

In fact JB's parents are already out at the farm. They are working on getting the secondary dwellings livable before we arrive in a few weeks.

They actually took Scrubs too. I really, really miss him and his presence in our home. I realized that it's a rare occasion for me to be in my house without Scrubs there. (I've been without him for long periods of time when having my babies or traveling, but I've always been away from my house.) But because he loves the farm so much and because our current landlord wants to try to sell our house and have showings, we thought him joining them on the farm would be a better choice.

(And while I do miss him, I sure don't miss his hair. WOW! My vacuuming needs have dropped exponentially!)

When I think of moving, I get this incredibly excited flutter in my stomach coupled with this intense feeling of finality and woah! So many times I have moved and had to make new friends and find my new groove. But each time I have known that I will only be there for a short time, and if it doesn't work out, there will be another move to try again.

Not this time.

This time we are picking somewhere that we plan to live forever.

In fact, we have named it.

Bauernhof Kitsteiner.

Why the name?

We actually thought of not naming the farm at all. It's our home. Most people don't name their house. But because JB is going to be holding educational events on the land, we knew we had to call it something. We played with all sorts of Biblical and meaningful names. But in the end, we wanted something that told what this place was for us:

A family farm.

But Kitsteiner Family Farm felt a bit overdone. Not the Kitsteiner part. (Pretty sure we are the only Kitsteiners with a farm in the USA.) But the Family Farm part.

So we started thinking of different ways of saying Family Farm. We played with Turkish and Portuguese, but while both of those meant something to us, they didn't resonate like we wanted. We even thought of my roots: Dutch. But that wasn't right either.

But German?

Our name is obviously very German. And Germany has always stood out in our minds as one of the most beautiful, rolling, relaxing, peaceful places we have ever been. We want our farm to feel like Germany and put our souls in that same state.

So we consulted with some of our German-comrades to make sure we had the name right and that it sounded right and that it would work. And we went with it.

Bauernhof Kitsteiner.

Kitsteiner Family Farm.

Other than the fact that I still have trouble pronouncing it (Bowern-hoff) and spelling it (still have to cheat on that one), we know we have named our new farm something that means something to us and allows us to return to our years living in Europe and the roots of JB's family name.

Now to get there.

P.S. We are still working on rolling my blog over to a new site. It's gotten put on the back burner but stay tuned.