County

[Guest guest]

I just moved here, so I am not an expert on County, but I like it

much better than Anoka. I was told that the county hired a consultant for

planning and are going to be meeting with the different areas over the next

couple years. One concern I have heard is they don't want to break up large

farm areas and turn them into housing developments.

We hope to get permission to put a school here. We have not formally

announced it yet, but we have met with individuals and groups that it would

impact and has been positive so far. I was told that the county planner

would tell us no because he has to say no to most things. He does not

actually decide, the board does. I heard lots of complaints about him, but I

liked him. He told us we absolutely could not put a school on valuable farm

land. I understood why too. They would not want a dentist office here

either. They want to keep business clustered around the towns.

I countered with " how can we have a nature/agriculture school on cement? " We

bought this particular piece of land because it has a nice balance of farm

land and forest. A creek runs through the whole property. It is across from

the 1,600 acre state park and eventually we will probably put this land in

some kind of a trust so it can never be a housing development. The more we

talked, the more interested he became and he told us to come back with the

design this fall and let him help us word it. 4-H has no place to meet and

this would be a perfect spot with the old barn and all.

I even bought a turn of the century separator so the kids can experience

pioneer life. I need to find an old farmer to show me how to work it. My 98

year old mother-in-law knew what it was right away, but in her German

family, the men did that work. The women did the kitchen work after the

cream and milk was brought to the house.

We met with ndale schools, they could look at us as competition because

we are in their district. They were very positive and we talked about how

we could share special ed services. They would like to bring their students

out to the land. Last week, we met with the new charter school in

Monticello and they want to refer kids here. A local physician on their

board has asked about enrolling her son. That school is sponsored by

Audobon and is working to be a green school.

Cold Spring is out of County, but they love our programs. We saved

them $30,000 in special ed costs because we try and fix kids and some

graduate out of services. That principal tried to do better food for kids

but it was to expensive and that's going to be one of our long range goals.

We all want it, we have to get the feds to give us more than one dollar to

work with. Maybe if we graduate enough kids out of special ed, the

government will give us more money for food. 1 in 166 kids has ASD and that

is not sustainable.

The neighbors around here have farms and they are supportive too. My

neighbor across the road thinks I go a little over board with animal

welfare, but he looked at me funny one day and said " you are going to teach

kids about farming, you know the government hates small farms and I want my

grandkids to go to your school. " His family immigrated from Holland in the

1850's and this was known as the Holland colony. My last name is DeBoer and

they are probably relations to my husbands dad 10 generations ago. I visited

the old cemetery last week and it made me cry. All Dutch names including

DeBoers.

I have found everyone to be far nicer than the city. I bring people out

just to show them how nice our post office is. It is down home friendly.

They bring my mail to the door to tell me there is no pick up before a

holiday. The post office guy always comes out from behind the window to

tell us pioneer stories. They did humanure before it was popular. Ha ha. I

called a local person to get an inspection on the septic system for the

pioneer house on this land and he responded with " that septic system is

fine, Maury put it in and he had a back hoe and did the drain field right. "

That would never happen in the city, city folks would have come out and

charge me $300 to tell me what they already knew.

Kathy