Lowell and Cindy Monroe

I had just driven into the garage - it had been a long day with a late meeting that forced my arrival home to after 9.  Lowell met me at the car – “I’ve got some bad news; Craig and Myrna were notified today that Dairyland wants them off their farm to build a flyash dump.”  Those were the first words that sent our world into a tailspin.  As I began to comprehend what the ramifications of these few words were, this phrase started to circle in my mind:  “It took us so long – it took us so long!”   It took us over six years to find a place to call home.  We wanted a small farm but not too many buildings, a chunk of land we could actually farm, and a comfortable home.  After too many viewings with the realtors, we decided to bid on the hwy 56 property and consider building. That was the fall of 1993 – and we lost the bid to another buyer.  We kept looking.  During a bitterly cold day in January of 1994, we received a call from the realtor asking if we were still interested in the hwy 56 property.  Again, we bid – but this time, purchased. By the end of 1994 we had built our home.  We moved in on January 14 of ’95 – our contractor’s wedding day.  It had been a long and sometimes labrynthian process.  We were so thankful to be in our home on our own farm.

We raised our three children on our little farm – all currently in college, however the eldest will finish her MS at Wisconsin in December. We do not often discuss what’s going on with our two girls because it simply brings them both to tears.  Our son’s response was to become angry and ask if we lived in Russia or China – “Are we building a Three Gorges dam here or what? This is America!”  His long term plan, since he was seven, is to live in our home “Once you and Dad are done with it.”  (Always a cheerful thought!) But, of course, we never, in our wildest dreams, thought we would be forced from our home.

In so many ways it’s as though our daily lives have been suspended.  There is no certainty to the future – no way of knowing “if” or “when”, just “maybe”. Every time we talk with our friends and neighbors about this, I get a sense of surrealism.  Sleep deprivation adds to that sense. We fervently pray for this nightmare to go away but know that God helps those who help themselves – and so, our efforts will continue as long as humanly possible.