Smith's Blueberries

08/28/2026

What looks like a pig roast on the outside..

08/28/2026

theft

08/28/2026

HOLD!

08/28/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “third spaces,” those places that weren’t home, school or work, but somehow became part of the structure of everyday life anyway. Growing up, there were three stores between what is now Dollar General and the farm, and two of them were absolutely amazing penny candy stores. The other had some of the best food around, and over the years there were actually a few little food establishments along that stretch that each played some part in my childhood.

One of those stores was also where one of my teachers worked during the summer, which presented a very serious problem because that woman could sniff out candy a mile away. 😂 So generally, if we were trying to conduct our penny-candy business without faculty supervision, we headed toward what is now the New Ipswich Market.

Greenville had its own little network too. There were no less than two stores, a laundromat that is still there today, a hardware store and even a liquor store right downtown. Both towns had pizza, and then we had the 1808, and boy were we blessed without even knowing it.

Because none of those places were only places to buy things. They were where people crossed paths over and over again, and somewhere between the stores, restaurants, churches, school, the laundromat, the hardware store and all the other places people naturally gathered, information moved.

You noticed when somebody stopped showing up, and you noticed when somebody who was normally laughing suddenly looked a little down. People knew who needed a hand, whose family was struggling, who needed a ride, who had a new baby, who was sick and who had perhaps helped themselves to a little too much of something. We knew who needed looking after because we actually saw one another often enough to notice the change.

Maybe it was even easier to keep the wrongs and struggles of people we loved a little more private then, because we had our own channels. Everybody didn’t need the details of somebody’s worst moment for the people who mattered to quietly know there was a problem, and help could arrive without turning someone into the subject of public discussion.

Food showed up, somebody took the kids, somebody drove you somewhere, somebody slipped you a few dollars or pulled you aside and asked if you were okay. The important part was that somebody noticed, and just as importantly, nobody celebrated alone either.

Birthdays, babies, graduations, weddings, deaths, fires, fundraisers and ordinary good news all traveled through those same little places. The person who handed you a bag of penny candy as a kid might be the person who fed your family during a hard year, donated to your fundraiser later in life or simply noticed that they hadn’t seen you around lately.

Then somewhere between the pandemic, the economy changing, and more and more of our everyday life getting swallowed up by corporate America, so many of those third spaces disappeared. We stayed home, we ordered things, we stopped lingering, and a lot of us got used to keeping to ourselves. Things got hard for a lot of people, and instead of talking about it, many of us got very good at struggling quietly.

But here we are in 2026, and I think we have a real chance for some kind of rebirth. Not by recreating everything exactly as it was, but by rebuilding the connections that made those places matter in the first place. It is okay that we have struggled, because every one of us has in one way or another, and maybe admitting that is part of how we start finding each other again.

I already see little pieces of it happening. There is a lovely new ladies group in town, crafters gathering at the library, Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and people finding reasons to sit together, make something, share information and simply know one another again. Maybe that is how it starts now: not waiting for community to magically reappear, but creating the places and groups where community can happen.

I think that’s part of what people mean when they talk about losing third spaces. We aren’t only losing little stores, restaurants and gathering places. We’re losing some of the informal infrastructure that taught a community how to keep track of its people.

Maybe we didn’t realize how much those places were doing for us because, at the time, they were simply there. Looking back now, I think they were one of the reasons nobody had to celebrate alone, struggle completely alone, or disappear quite so easily, and maybe rebuilding that is one of the best things we can choose to do for each other now.

Plus, we need a breakfast joint.

08/27/2026

*Must remember to edit other user names out* 🤣

08/27/2026

This whole thing did not start with lawsuits, social media, police calls, or some giant neighborhood war. It started much more simply than that. When work first began near the easement, including the removal of a shed and trees, I went down there with the property information I had, including the maps and records I had relied on in purchasing and financing my property, and tried to explain where the ownership lines were. I did not wake up one morning looking for a legal battle. I was trying to stop a property dispute before it became one.

That matters to me because, underneath everything else that has happened since, this is fundamentally about property rights. People sometimes forget how important those rights are until the property happens to be theirs. Maybe there is an old trail everybody has walked for twenty years, or a shortcut everybody has always used, and then somebody purchases the land and closes it. You might hate it. You might think it is unfair. You might have twelve opinions about what the owner should allow. But if the law says it is their property, your feelings do not create ownership. Property rights mean something precisely because they are supposed to remain rights even when somebody else does not like the answer.

I knew my deed before any of this started because I had to. Buying this farm through USDA's Farm Service Agency financing meant understanding what I was mortgaging and what I was responsible for protecting. My deed is complicated. The history of this property is complicated. That is exactly why, when this disagreement began, I went to the documents instead of simply announcing that whatever I wanted must be mine. From my perspective, I have spent this entire case doing the same thing: deeds, surveys, maps, records, photographs, historical documents and the evidence that can actually be presented to a court.

What still amazes me is how differently this could have gone. At virtually any point, there could have been a conversation that sounded like, “I got this wrong. Let’s figure out what belongs to whom and repair what needs to be repaired.” I would have preferred that. I would have been perfectly content to have the damaged area restored, my access respected and both households go back to living their lives. Instead, the dispute continued, access became nonexistent and the area more contentious, and eventually I found myself learning civil procedure because simply saying, “This is my property” does not accomplish very much when the person on the other side says the opposite.

Learning the law as a self-represented person has been one of the hardest things I have ever done. There is the law itself, and then there is learning how you are supposed to use it: pleadings, motions, evidence, service, deadlines, hearings, objections and a hundred procedural rules that have nothing to do with whether you are right about the underlying facts. It's a dance. It's chess. It's checkers. It's the worst college thesis you have ever written while the subject contantly changes in real time. I have made mistakes, had things denied, learned from them and filed again. What I have not done is decide that protecting my property became less important because protecting it turned out to be difficult.

That is probably the part people misunderstand when they tell me to calm down, back off or let it go. I am not going to. I am going to pursue the remedies available to me until this is actually resolved, including the property issues and whatever damages the court ultimately determines are supported by the evidence. That is not about revenge, and it is not about enjoying conflict. It is about the very basic idea that you should not have to surrender a right simply because enforcing it becomes exhausting.

There is also a larger lesson in this that has bothered me more and more as the years have gone on. A functioning community requires people to understand the difference between wanting something and being entitled to it. You can disagree with your neighbor. You can think a law is stupid. You can believe a boundary ought to be somewhere else. But at some point adults have to be capable of hearing, “No, that is not yours,” looking at the evidence and dealing with the answer like adults. Otherwise the burden falls on everybody else—the courts, police, municipalities, families and neighbors—to resolve a conflict that could have ended with accountability and a conversation.

The cases are still pending, so there are things I am deliberately not discussing publicly and facts that will be decided where they belong: in court. But I can say this much without hesitation. I knew why I started this fight, and after everything that has happened, I know even more clearly why I intend to finish it.

08/26/2026

Ugh.. the unedited self. What do I need here? Is it filters? AI? Bondo??

08/26/2026

08/25/2026