2024 Wrap Up from Heartroost

Happy Holidays to you all!

We’ve had quite the year … full of interactions and hopes and love and pain and joys and surprises. More drama and struggles than most years we can remember, but more grace and mercies too. God has taken good care of us, as always.

The most memorable parts included …

• Both Douglas and Fynn had vehicle accidents

• Michael’s sister Becky died

• Bethany started a business

• We and 8 other friends were able to surprise Michael’s sister Keren on her 60th Birthday Caribbean cruise (Swam with Dolphins! Mayan ruins! Games!)

• We all made it to Chicago for a few lovely days of Rule family time

• Bethany had months of PT to fix her left shoulder

• We all weathered the flu and Covid

• Given(!) a mini excavator last month, which Fynn immediately used to build himself a new road

• Started work as designers for Bright Barrel, a friend’s new non-alcoholic beer company

• Took several trips to Chattanooga to work on Tom and Martha’s camper.

• Over 150 of our trees were knocked down by Helene, without damage to a single structure!

• Lightning struck twice within 100 yards of the camper, and one of the strikes fried the router and tripped all the breakers

• Found homes for a stray dog and the 7 puppies she had on our property

• Gained two other teenage puppies

• Cleared fallen trees out of the highway many times

• Took thousands of tree/sky/fog photos (never losing the wonder)

• Watched Fynn and friends build a Viking-ish longhouse in the woods, with many weekends full of teenagers camping here as a result

• Made some more local connections

• Caught the northern lights (in TN!) for the first time ever

• Had a car blow up while driving to Becky’s funeral and were given a Cadillac(!) to drive home in

• Sampled a few of the 430 churches in Hawkins County

• Fynn and his partner came in 6th in a national engineering competition

Now to catch you up on each of us, and give some more details if you’re up for that …

Michael had a 3 week Sol LeWitt install job in Georgia (a welcome surprise, as that work dried up last year after a re-org), did some drawing and painting commissions, created a logo and can designs for Bright-Barrel.com, reworked the water system, sawmilled lumber for ourselves and a neighbor, ran out a lot of chain saw batteries making small and steady dents in the massive cleanup work from Helene, took care of Becky for several weeks in PA on two different occasions in the last four months before she passed away on January 27th, helped put a new roof on Keren and Bobby’s place, sold some plein air paintings, and drew a lot of portraits at the local Heritage Days festival (our 3rd year there), as well as on many weekends in downtown Knoxville. He also started regrowing his mustache on August 27th, exactly one year after cutting it off. He’s just now starting to catch up to Douglas!

Bethany made a few local friends! She did some cleaning and organizing for a couple in town, which helped her decide to start her own organizing business, spending much of the summer launching organizedbyfriday.com. Gaining clients in a small town is rather challenging, but she’s trusting she’ll get more once the word-of-mouth chain gets going. Her shoulder slowed her down for the first part of the year, but she’s back to normal activities now and relearning how enjoyable it is to tackle land projects with Michael 😊. Many hours were spent turning Michael’s drawings into NA beer can designs, as well as producing a brand book and various marketing materials. She also fixed the camper’s furnace, fed hungry kids, attended the local mystery book club, ran hundreds of errands, met up with as many friends as possible (special thanks for those who came to me!), enjoyed two different girls’ weekends immensely, and went to funerals in Chicago and Iowa, in addition to Becky’s in PA.

Fynn wrecked his ancient and beloved 1988 Volvo 240 on January 4th on his way to school, taking out a mailbox and spinning before hitting a tree. He needed 53 stitches to put the left side of his face back together, and God spared his left eye by a fraction of an inch. Many many mercies, and he’s got a few light scars that will be lifelong reminders. Just one of those mercies was that the doc on duty at the local hospital just happened to have been a NASCAR doc for many years, so had a lot of relevant experience in fine stitching work! Fynn also bought himself a nice big Stihl chainsaw this summer and managed to bounce it off his knee while we were away for the day. He had a friend stitch the shallow wound back together and added another scar to his collection.

We celebrated his 18th in March with a party in Knoxville with friends and family, featuring one of Keren’s famous group games. Adulthood at last! He’s been in the work-based learning program at school all year, leaving school early and working 6-hour shifts at Mahle in their Automotive division making pistons. He gets home late and tired. He was in the Robotics and Technology Student Association groups Spring semester and got into the National engineering problem solving competition in Orlando with his partner, coming in 6th out of 400+ teams! The project wasn’t known ahead of time, and they had to solve a problem something like “You have 90 minutes to take these 5 pieces of paper, 2 pieces of card stock, a few straws and popsicle sticks and 20 inches of string, and make the longest cantilevered bridge that you can (using a 20# dumbbell as a counterweight) which must hold up a tennis ball for at least 15 seconds.” We were very glad that Mahle sponsored the 5-day trip for both of them.

Fynn spends many weekends in Knoxville with friends, has applied to UT Knoxville for next year, and is tackling the last few bottom-of-the-barrel classes he needs to graduate next May. He’s continued forging on his own time too … helmets, a gauntlet and a short sword, and many knives, hooks, and pendants. He is also the defacto automotive expert around here and in addition to putting a new engine in his backup Volvo over the summer he fixed my car at least twice and Michael’s truck once. He often gets asked to diagnose and fix things by his friends, and friends of friends, and is beloved by his automotive teacher at school for his insights and drive.

Alex, Donny, Douglas, Fynn, Paul

Douglas moved back to Mechanicsburg PA (after a year back home with us following his first stint up there three years ago) on December 30th of 2023 and works in a custom door factory, sharing an apartment with his cousin Ashriel. He’s delighted to be living in a solid building, not a camper or his van, which he left with us as its transmission needs work. His accident was just a couple of weeks ago when he was biking to work for his 6am shift, wearing an orange vest over his coat per usual, when a car came over the hill in his lane and hit him head-on. He smacked his head so hard on the hood that he cut his lip open, broke a tooth, and passed out for a few minutes in the road. Sadly, the driver took off and no one has come forward as a witness and no security cameras picked up the scene. He had CT scans of his head to make sure all was as it should be, and a slight concussion, but is healing fine and will just need some dental work. Once again, God’s many many mercies! We’ve been able to see him a few times this year, thankful for that also.

Heartstrings and hopes …

We’re not even remotely close to where we had hoped to be as we approach the 5-year mark on this property, and while that’s no shock as the hopes were high, the current list of unfinished things seems mighty long! We don’t have guest quarters, a start on a house, anywhere near enough storage, or even all our belongings on the land yet, as we still have storage units in PA and Rogersville. Switching gears from road-life to land-life has been much harder than we thought. Perhaps we’re clinging to the freedom of the Heartloose years a bit too much, which doesn’t translate all that well to scratching out a life on 32 acres of steep woods? We’re still figuring things out.

We want to share this land with others, and let folks marinate in the peace and quiet (if you don’t count the dogs!). Have cabins for them to stay in, tent spots, and a camper hookup or two. A mistake we made early on was inviting someone we love to come stay for a bit before we’d established ourselves here … introducing another player just as we were gathering steam as our team of four. It rocked the roost, twisted the hierarchy and relationships, and cost us our privacy as they lived in a tent just 15 feet from the camper. Despite another set of helpful hands to pitch in, adding another voice and ego to the projects made it impossible to keep us all on board and working as a unit. It was a struggle, and went on for two years before they found another place to go. It took me another year to stop looking over my shoulder.

By then Douglas had moved to PA, and Fynn decided to go to public school. Our team was effectively reduced to two. We did a lot of work in Knoxville where we still had far more contacts, but the daily commuting (75 miles each way) became too much, so we pretty much stopped that work after the 3rd year. The one exception was building Keren her dream handicap-accessible bathroom, which ended up taking almost 4 months to finish … that’s a novel in itself. It’s a lovely bathroom though!

We love the land more every year, and are learning its quirks and seasons and habits. Yes there are times when I think we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, but reading Michael’s old blog post about finding this place can turn that around pretty fast, as I’m reminded of how God orchestrated every detail. I can’t dwell on the comparison between what I expected to accomplish and the current reality but need to accept the things that haven’t happened yet, and work on what we can do. Keep teaming up with Michael whenever possible, pick away at making stone walls and clearing land for growing food, and design and project-plan the spaces that I’m missing the most. Learn to ask for help when we need it and follow up on the contacts that we’re slowly making in the local community. Prioritize relationships wherever possible, and trust that things will happen in God’s timing.

The dream fire hasn’t gone out but needs reviving more often than I’d like. We’ve chosen a life that isn’t very structured, well knowing that comes with a lot more variables and pitfalls. We’ve freelanced most of our married life, and that continues as Michael decided about 18 months ago it was now-or-never on his art career as the major income source. While he’s making some headway with commissions and plein-air paintings, it’s not a steady stream yet. The cleaning and organizing work I’ve done hasn’t brought in more than a trickle yet either. Despite the challenges, God has many ways of keeping us afloat!

Neither Michael nor I are the greatest at selling ourselves, it’s hard for us to put a value on our God-given talents, and our tendency is to over-deliver. The years on the road freed us from that need as we never put a price on anything, and picking that up again is tricky. We have so many things to learn and never lack in ways we need to grow. Michael often asks God to enlarge our hearts, and it certainly seems to be necessary on a daily basis!

We are not at a loss for things to do, despite few outside jobs, as the lists are endless. The camper is old and takes a lot of maintenance and TLC. The steep gravel driveway and growing system of dirt roads, which are mostly only 4-wheeler passable and several are still blocked by Helene’s damage, take a lot of tending and continually need improvement. Drainage is a frequent issue, but we’ve made a lot of small improvements in that over the years. Our fresh-water system is based on rain collection from tarps on the mountainside, as well as harvesting creek water for the 4-5 months of the year that it runs. We upgraded to an old vinyl billboard for our main collection spot this year and it’s really upped our supply! Michael is constantly improving, checking, tweaking and pumping from one tank to another as we currently have three 275-gallon IBC tanks.

One of many trees we’ve helped clean up so that traffic can resume.

There is always wood collection, tree processing, firewood chopping, sawmilling and stacking boards to dry, finding places to put new stacks of drying wood and things to cover them with, and sharpening sawmill and chainsaw blades. We are getting more creative in the extension cord farm that powers everything from the “temporary” pole that was put in 5 years ago, until a primary residence is built. More storage is always needed, despite two finished sheds and Fynn’s workshop with a sleeping loft, many things are still tarped or in storage elsewhere. We never lack for vehicles to fix, errands to run in town (25 minutes) or the nearest city with stores like Home Depot or Aldi (45 minutes), dogs to walk, and leaves to clear.

We gather with family in Knoxville when we can, keep a bulletin board current with all the local connections we’ve made and people we’ve met, and wave (as you do here) at every single person we pass while driving, or see driving by our place. It DOES seem that the seeds we’ve planted and been given are just starting to produce fruit, as I had my first lunch with a local friend earlier this month, and we have some new acquaintances to call and follow up with. Hope is staying afloat!

We have had our health preserved and healing when needed, 32 acres of gorgeous woods to walk in and tend and shape and use for good, kind and delightful boys that are finding their wings, animals to love on, game-changing equipment to make progress with, friends that love us and pray for us, and more answered prayers than you can shake a stick at. We still have NO idea how to accomplish all that is in front of us or where the next need will be met but are asking God for vision and words and customers and connections, and trust that He will continue to carry, love on, and open up doors for us as necessary. We covet your prayers for this also, if you’re so inclined.

We love you all, thank God for you, and hope to find a way to see you in 2025! Thanks for being part of our journey.

Much love,
Michael, Bethany, Douglas, and Fynn

+ the hounds Farven (6), Diesel (1.5) and Dixie (1.5)
+ the cats Sparrow (15) and Snick (1.5)

Many more photos of 2024 can be found in this Google gallery and most are captioned, just click on the speech bubble in the lower right-hand corner to see them.