February 2005 - Waiting for Spring

There's a reason the real estate market goes dormant in the winter. Nothing looks the same by the pallid light of a bone chilling day. Truth be told, February may not be the worst of all real estate months in a season that shivers and coughs and warms its hands by melting snow, then freezing the dripping drops into icy icicles.  

February is when the melancholy gray sky bears down hard and low to envelop the hibernating earth in somber shades of tawny brown, spent corn beige and slushy snow white. It's the season when bare limbed trees stand stark and forbidding against the ashen woods, barren fields and valleys. There is a harsh beauty and stillness in the winter landscape like the silent glint of gunmetal on a frozen pond. 

But unlike January, February holds the promise of spring around the corner with hints of new growth popping up under the melting snow. It is the time to fantasize, conceptualize and visualize grassy rolling hills, fields of corn knee high by the Fourth of July, blue sky mornings, star-filled evenings, fireflies so thick in the fields you can reach out and catch one, if you tried. These photos of the farm were taken two months before it fell into the hands of the Cortopassi and Voellinger families, either by happenstance or divine providence that we should be united by the land.  This is where the story begins by an ice-covered pond in the northwest corner of Illinois where deer and turkey roam the countryside and life slows to a rural pace. Neighbors are more than a stone's throw away and the nearest cafe is in a small town called Mt. Carroll.      Blog was not part of my vocabulary five years ago so I'm recreating the journey thus far through photographs and eye-witness accounts. This is the proof.