This was a question in Countryside a couple of years ago, but I would like to hear from forum users on their choice.

Personally, I am a big fan of Louis Bromfield's writings about his experiences at Malabar Farm in Pleasant Valley, near Mansfield, OH. Area where I'm at doesn't have a name, such as Matthews Hollow, so I adopted the name of Pleasant Valley Farm and Forge (since I do a little blacksmithing on the side). Only later did I find out the neighbor across the road calls his place Pleasant Hills Farm and when there once was a one-room school down the road it was called Pleasant Hills School.

-- Ken Scharabok (scharabo@aol.com), July 13, 2000

Answers

our house and farm are known as 5 Lady Lane ,myself and 4 daughters, hubby thought of that The company is called On common ground , we do landscape construction and planttings. i thought of that 7 yrs. ago it just seemed to fit.

-- renee oneill (oneillsr@home.com), July 13, 2000.

Our place is called Red Gate Ranch, that is the name it has had for 50 years or more and what the locals know it by. when we bought it there was no gate at all, let alone fence. We have photos from the 60s, then there was a red gate, we now have one.We have photographs of the house when it was being built in 1889 and of a 4th of July picnic in 1909, under big maples in the front yard, those trees are huge now and shade the whole house.

-- Hendo (OR) (redgate@echoweb.net), July 13, 2000.

Our place is called Thistle Hill, cause...you guessed it! Tons of the stuff which we are getting rid of SLOWLY but surely. I guess you could say that the place kinda named itself!! Judy in Md.

-- Judy Bates (trailhppr@msn.com), July 13, 2000.

There are at least six different kinds of frogs here on the land as well as toads. In the spring its a real treat when they're in full chorus. Its not official yet but the name will be either Frog Hollow Farm or Frog Holler Farm.

-- john leake (natlivent@pcpros.net), July 13, 2000.

A Journey's End. When we moved here, that was what it felt like. A long journey had ended.

-- Marci (ajourend@libby.org), July 13, 2000.

When I was out driving around looking for land, I came across a chunk of forest with an old real estate sign on it. It was so dense, I could not figure how to get onto the property. I gave up, and went on to negotiate for a different property, but that one didn't pan out. So some months later, I thought, oh, I'll go check out the other piece again. Just as I was driving up, I saw a black bear run across the road and down ridge on the other side of the property. At the place where the bear had come out of, was an old logging road onto the land. The bear had shown me how to enter the forest. So it's been Blackbear Ridge ever since. Bears have been sighted at least 5 times since (2years). We also unofficially subtitle our place "Home of the Dog & Duck", cause there's a shmancier place down the road called The Horse & Hound.

-- snoozy (allen@oz.net), July 13, 2000.

Ours started out as a joke, way before we ever moved to the country! It's a reflection back to the movie "Rancho Deluxe" from the 70's. Combining that with one of our last names gives us a version: Rancho Borgo, which we thought hilarious. When we moved to the country and got our first piece of undeveloped land and our ol' broken down single-wide mobile home, my mom had a sign painter make us a sign! When I first started in sheep, I thought and thought and thought about a more "marketable" name but just couldn't change it. So it's still here and so are we! And it's been the same name for FOUR locations! So I guess it's a farm as a state of mind....

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), July 13, 2000.

My husbands English and we lived and raised vegetables in England for several years. When we got our farm in the Ozarks we wanted a name that showed our English roots and ties. Summer is hot and dry in these mountains so we finally settled on Withering Heights, a play on words from the Bronte novel. Kim

-- kim (fleece@eritter.net), July 13, 2000.

Our ranch name came as an extension of the prefix we use for all our animals registries, Dogs, Cattle, Horses, etc. Ja=Janet, Ra=Randy, Co=Company. It has been very usefull in maintaining company business accounts seperate from personal accounts. All animals / Birds we breed and the ranch itself, now, are called JaRaCo. The idea to name our ranch origionaly came from my childhood fondness for Bonanza, the Ponderosa, always seemed like home. So, today, its JaRaCo Ranch. We most often refer to it as a place with recognition qualities. As in "Let's go back to JaRaCo." It's a haven. Randy Henry (JaRaCo)

-- Randy Henry (JaRaCo) (JaRaCoRanch@aol.com), July 13, 2000.

Olde Welsh Farms...our last name, Flewelling, comes from the Welsh surname Llewelyn, (Llywelyn).

-- Abigail F. (treeoflife@sws.nb.ca), July 13, 2000.

Howlin' Coyote Ranch..for obvious reasons. Took me quite a while to learn to sleep in spite of their nightly serenades! If it weren't that, it would have to be Tumbleweed Acres, which also applied when we bought the place! Jan

-- Jan in Colorado (Janice12@aol.com), July 13, 2000.

We call our place Stonycroft. Stony for obvious reasons (we are in the middle of the granite state, after all!!) and 'croft' means either a small enclosed field, or a small leased farm. Well, we have an enclosed field of about six acres (stone walls around it) and although we are buying the place, still have a mortgage on it, so 'croft' seemed appropriate.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), July 13, 2000.

Our place is Little Vian Creek Ranch. We have about a mile of .....can you guess............little Vian creek running right through the middle of it.

-- Mona (jascamp@ipa.net), July 13, 2000.

By God's Grace we received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, and by His grace we were able to obtain this little farm, we call Grace Acres. To Him be the glory!! Wendy

-- Wendy@GraceAcres (wjl7@hotmail.com), July 13, 2000.

We've ben here a year and a half and have yet to come up with a name. I have been wanting one and thinking on it for sometime but my hisband only recently decided we needed one as we try to evolve into small business to sustain ourselves better on the farm than off.

We raise sheep, chickens, pheasants, geese and rabbits. We plan to add guineas and maybe a peacock as well as a team of driving horses for work, pleasure and living history demo's. We have a huge garden, the berry patch and orchard are coming along and we are learning herbs. We want to reflect the ways things used to be. we have some Irish in us that we hold dear. We live in a river valley (small in the ND prairie). ANY IDEAS??????

-- Novina in ND (lamb@stellarnet.com), July 14, 2000.

From 1988 to 1993, I searched DESPERATELY for a farm for my family. I used to pack up my 2 infant boys in our little Ford Escort, take back pop bottles for gas money, and hit the road. I would drive ALL day looking at empty land, uninhabitable mobile homes, and abandoned farmhouses. I was obsessed. Then I would come home to our decrepit house in a rotten neighborhood, and spend my evenings reading COUNTRYSIDE. We had no money, and as many-a-realtor informed me, no business looking for farms without a sizeable down-payment in the bank. On a beautiful fall day in '93, I saw the ad for our farm. We drove out here and looked at it and fell totally in love with the place. 'Course, we still had not a dime. About three days later, my Grampa died, leaving me and inheritance that made a nice down payment. It was nothing less than a miracle in timing. The first month we were here, I was overflowing with graditude to God for letting us have this wonderful little place. It had all been so unlikely! In hopes that I would never forget that feeling of blissful thankfulness, I decided to call the place GRATEFUL ACRES. (Funny: when I told my dad about the name I had chosen, he said, "well, you know, you don't have to go with the first name you think of...!")

-- Shannon (Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary) (gratacres@aol.com), July 14, 2000.

Nice story Shannon. Thanks!

-- john leake (natlivent@pcpros.net), July 14, 2000.

Shannon, I think your name has another meaning, all those critters are grateful to you for your love and kindness!!

Novina, When you find the right name you will know it. It took us over a year to come up with the name of our farm. My husband and I made both made so many suggestions when he finally suggested the name we chose it was perfect to both of us! Don't worry if it is taking you a while!

Kim

-- kim (fleece@eritter.net), July 14, 2000.

My wife likes to call our place "Green ACRE" (we only have 1.3 acre of usable ground), but my favorite is "Paid Off and Producing".

Jay Blair

-- Jay Blair (jaybblair678@yahoo.com), July 14, 2000.

Our place is called Wildwood Farms: Our first place at the end of the road was 40 acres surrounded on 3 sides by thousands of acres of county forest. When we bought my grandfather's old place a quarter mile away the name still seemed to fit. We still have the original place and rent it out, hence the "farms", plural.

Novina, I love your name. I humbly suggest "Novina's Crossing" for the "crossing over" of so many animal varieties and the blending of the modern with the traditional.

-- Peg (NW WI) (wildwoodfarms@hushmail.com), July 14, 2000.

I like to call our place the "Bunny Funny Farm" because my daughter's 4-H rabbit project got a little out of hand, but my husbant won't go for it and let me put a sign out by the road!!!

-- Patti (trigger@mcn.net), July 15, 2000.

this may sound a bit strange but i refer to my place as "never done" it just seems that the main thing i do with my to do list is add to it and guess i will till the day i die which is also the day i plan on no longer working the place. gail

-- gail in missouri (gef123@hotmail.com), July 15, 2000.

Cackleberry Farm. From my grandfather's habit of referring to eggs as "cackleberries". Sheep have come and gone. Piggies and turkeys come and go each year. Same with meat chickens. But the laying hens are always here. GL!

-- Brad (Homefixer@SacoRiver.net), July 15, 2000.

14 years ago, when we had only two children, we were given a small mobile home. We went shopping for land to put our home on, and found the property we now have, which was very dry, wooded, and grown up with weeds and blackberry vines. It was rough, but it was OURS, and after years of renting we were so excited. Two weeks after we moved here it started to rain, and it rained and it rained, and soon our mobile home looked like a bridge over a great lake. It was then that we learned we had bought land in Florida's "Green Swamp". The water went down eventually, and from time to time through the years this same thing has happened, but we have learned to cope, and to know the water will go down and it will be beautiful again. One time I remember so well, the water was deep, and a member of my family felt sorry for us and offered us a house in town with no money down and no interest. We thought it over, and looked out the window at the water, and decided we would rather live in the swamp than to have city sidewalks. And we don't regret it. Then later, I was thinking of the Scripture, "He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul." So was born the name of our farm, "Stillwaters". When the water is up we get in our little boat and paddle around our farm, and the water muffles the sounds. It is so still. So the name has a double meaning. But thank God He also provided us with a high ridge along the creek bank about 300 feet long, and a hundred feet wide, and there our animals can stay until the water goes down. So they survive okay, no worse off than the animals of people in cold climates, that must stay in a barn during the winter. Our family has grown, and we bought a bigger mobile home, and did a lot of filling in before we set it up, so we have a lot more area to live on now during the wet times. There has also been some work done to improve the drainage in our area recently. We bought the lot next to our original lot, giving us five acres total, and we have a couple more high ridges for gardening. So it is much better than it was in '86, but it will always be low land, and sometimes will flood. We've learned to "go with the flow" here on Stillwaters Farm. Lela P.

-- Lela Picking (Stllwtrs55@aol.com), July 15, 2000.

We're still working on it. I'm a Sagittarius and husband is an Aries, and all the buildings are painted red with kinda terracotta colored trim. We're at the foot of Voltaire Canyon, and he likes Voltaire Canyon Ranch, but I say we're not a ranch and that's too generic. He thinks Firesign Farm is too 1960's hippy-ish (I did like the old comedy ensemble Firesign Theater) so it could still be subject to change.

-- Sadge (firesignfarm@hotmail.com), July 17, 2000.

We have the most perfect willow tree on our property. The thing is 45 feet tall, has a 4 foot thick trunk, and branches with a 50 foot spread. It takes me 4 hours every spring to trim the hanging branches so that we can see out while sitting under it. It's the first thing people mention when they first see our place. I've looked high and low for a willow tree that even comes close to our trees picture perfection and size. The fact that it feeds off of our septic field might have something to do with it. Hence the name of our homestead; Willow Farms.

-- Peggy Adkins (adkinsonthefarm@hotmail.com), July 18, 2000.

Field of Dreams Farm it is ! When we bought this place all we could do is dream , it was such a mess .The house had no doors or windows , it was filled with trash .The land was filled with old farming trash and dead sheep .For some reason we saw through all that ,We still have much to do , but we will get there someday.

-- Patty Gamble (fodfarms@slic.com), July 18, 2000.

Just got our dream property (please respond to my question re; orchards!) Have been thinking on a name--after closing a few weeks ago we have discovered the place is covered with wild raspberries. They're delicious too. But Raspberry Hill farm sounds too commonplace somehow.

Thought of calling it "Trinity Springs" because originally we thought there were 3 springs and we wanted to honor our Triune God with the name. Later we found several more springs, so canned that idea.

The much smaller, more suburban place we've been living on the past 10 years we decided to call "Yarrow Hill Farm" for marketing our eggs, etc. The hill our house is on has lots of yarrow and I have a strong interest in herbs, and so.

Still searching for a name for our new place, enjoyed this thread.

-- alana (lester@erols.com), July 18, 2000.

We were surprised one day when an older man stopped by and asked if he could take a picture of an old building on our property. He said he went to school there! I don't know why we never noticed that it was a school house- duh!- I guess it's so dark inside that we didn't notice the chalkboard on the wall and we were busy with other things. We didn't catch the school's name from the man, but on my next trip to the library I looked it up in a small book on our county's one- room school houses. Couldn't find it. I checked the same book again another time & recognized our neighbor's house in a photo of where the school USED to sit. It had been moved to our land to (gasp) raise pigs in! It's name was Springport (although there is no spring or port here!) and so that has become our farm and homeschool name.

-- Jean (schiszik@tbcnet.com), July 19, 2000.

Our house sits level with the road but the property slopes sharply into a small valley. On the hillside grow many staghorn sumac trees so we call our place Staghorn Valley Farm.

-- Kathy (jubilant@ncweb.com), July 19, 2000.

One of my most favorite posessions is a book published in the 1860's called 'My Farm of Edgewood.' It tells of the author's desire to find a quiet place to live the life of a gentileman farmer and leave city life behind. I had intended to name my place 'Edgewood' but since the place I found was in the middle of the woods, not the edge of it, it didn't quite fit.

I'm not sure how long I sat on the rock ledge that overlooks the hollow that runs through the place before my mind stumbled on 'Ledgewood' but I knew it was the right name as soon as I thought of it. There are pictures and an online journal in the farm section of http://ledgewood-consulting.com

-- Paul S. Hetrick (p@ledgewood-consulting.com), July 19, 2000.

Ours is more or less self-explanatory; The Haphazard Homestead.

-- Jorja Hernandez (jorja@color-country.net), July 19, 2000.

Our farm is at the edge of a wood. Behind it is another large forest. In front and across the road is another forest. At night the coyotes behind and in front of the farm howl at one another, our dogs answer as do the peacock and the guineas and the geese. The guineas and chickens make thier soft roosting noises and the cows low wasy off and the hoot owls saying"who cooks for you all"...well you get the picture. Nightsong Farm is named for all their sounds.

-- Susie Stretton (nightsong@beci.net), July 20, 2000.